An Indian scholar has discovered that women in the Third World are represented in most feminist literature on development as having * needs’ and 'problems’ but few choices and no freedom to act. What emerges from such modes of analysis is the image of an average Third World woman constructed through the use of statistics and certain categories. It is said that an average Third World woman leads an, essentially truncated life based on her feminine gender and her being ‘third world" - ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition bound, domestic, family oriented and victimised. This is in contrast to the self-representation of western women as educated, modern with freedom to make their own decisions. These representations assume western standards as the benchmark against which to measure the situation of Third World women.
The result is paternalistic attitude on the part of western women toward their Third World counterparts. It is perpetuation of the hegemonic idea of west's superiority. It is in this process of homogenisation and systematisation of the oppression of women in the Third World, that power is excercised in much of the western feminist discourse. This power needs to be redefined, because of its subjective nature of interpretation.
The Western feminist literature depicts Third World women as having
