Feminist strategies under the grip of authoritarian regimes and imperialism – 2 The Crisis of Feminisms
While external interventions and the repressive policies of authoritarian regimes directly shape women’s lives, the discourse of “women’s rights” can also be instrumentalized to legitimize these interventions. According to Rafia Zakaria, authoritarian regimes and war policies suppress women’s struggles: “Bombs suffocate feminist movements too”
The global rise of authoritarianism, accompanied by anti-gender movements, not only targets women’s hard-won rights. It also erodes the organizational capacity, language, and transnational solidarity of feminist movements. This emerging political line—shaped around notions such as “family,” “tradition,” and “national values”—seeks to re-limit women’s presence in both public and private spheres, often pushing feminist struggles into a defensive and fragmented position. This process unfolds not only through the loss of rights, but also through the increasing visibility of internal inequalities and crises of representation within feminist movements themselves.
This picture becomes even more complex in the Middle East. Wars, foreign interventions, and the repressive policies of authoritarian regimes directly shape women’s lives, while the discourse of “women’s rights” is at times used to legitimize these very interventions. As seen in cases such as Afghanistan and Iran, narratives built around claims of “rescuing” women from the outside often weaken rather than strengthen local feminist struggles. They push women into a position of being caught between regimes and global powers. This situation makes it necessary to rethink both the limits and possibilities of feminist solidarity.
Within this framework, we spoke with Rafia Zakaria about this multilayered crisis, extending from the Middle East to the global feminist movement. In her book Against White Feminism, Zakaria examines how feminist discourse is intertwined with global power relations. She emphasizes that Western-centric feminist approaches often reduce women in the Global South to passive subjects and render their struggles invisible, while also drawing attention to how these approaches are entangled with imperial interventions.
Zakaria argues that feminist movements must confront not only external pressures but also their own internal power dynamics simultaneously. This interview opens up a discussion on the dilemmas, contradictions, and the urgent need for reconstruction facing feminist struggles today.
How do rising authoritarianism and anti-gender movements around the world affect global feminist movements?
I think have had a terrible effect on global feminist movements. By and large, feminist movements in places like India or the United States have not been able to thwart the propaganda that is being spread by these movements. In both cases, anti-gender and authoritarianism is directly connected because authoritarian leaders try to suppress the most vulnerable in society and that tends to be women. Men are encouraged to enact this in their personal and political lives and women-sadly-pay the price.
In your book “Against White Feminism,” you argue that Western-centric feminism is intertwined with global power relations. What exactly does “white feminism” represent, and why is it a critical debate for the global feminist movement today?
As I note on the first page of my book-by “white” feminism I do not mean the skin color white…instead I mean whiteness as a power system that upholds and forwards the agenda of white supremacy by centering the agendas and priorities of white dominance. Most white feminists are white but within the post colonial and colonial contexts, a white feminist can be black or brown as well to the extent that they center whiteness as the basis of their knowledge and narratives.
Throughout history, the discourse of women's rights has sometimes been used to legitimize military interventions and foreign policy. We saw this clearly in the case of Afghanistan. How can feminists oppose this instrumentalization of women's rights?
The revolt that is required necessitates collective action but increasingly the possibilities of this are dying out. 165 schoolgirls were killed in Iran and the world’s feminists did not manage to organize a single transnational protest. International institutions like the UN have become too feeble to be able organize the world’s women and so you see a fragmentation of the movement. There is very little counter discourse….bombing Iran for instance may have taken out the Ayatollah but it has also choked the Iranian feminist movement to death.
Today, the women's movement in Iran is receiving worldwide support. However, in the West, this struggle is often represented through the discourse of “liberating women.” Is it possible to both support the struggle of Iranian women and oppose foreign intervention?
I disagree with you. I do not see the Iranian women getting international support. There has been lip service but there is no real counter discourse….mostlyl because people (including some diaspora Iranians) cannot seem to accept that bombing a country is an act that always positions women who have been protesting as internal traitors. It becomes almost impossible for them to continue their struggle because they are being bombed and because everyone sees them as collaborators with those that are bombing them. It is tragic and utterlyl heart rending that this lesson was not learned from Afghanistan.
