Early feminist theory had emphasised the commonalities of women's oppression, neglecting profound differences between women in terms of class, age, religion, race and nation. As its exclusionary nature became evident, the collective 'we' of feminism was called into question. The inadequacies of feminist theorising that conflated the condition of white, middle class women with the condition of all women were highlighted in North America by black and Latin feminists, and in Britain by black and Asian feminists. Such critiques evoked the concepts of 'inter-locking identities' and inter-locking oppressions'. Related and more radical analyses came from feminist scholars in the Third world, where quite different agendas were called for. These critiques heightened the irrelevance of western feminism's analytical frameworks to the lives of most women around the world and attempted to reposition feminist debate within broader social, economic and cultural contexts of analysis advocated by scholars such as Janus. Such critiques spoke from a post-colonial position, in which the self-assumed authority of western feminists to speak about or indeed for others was disputed and decentered. Influential accounts of the tendencies of masculinist imperialist ideological formation to construct a 'monolithic Third world' woman', discursively constituted as the universal victim of Third world patriarchy, challenged feminists to "unlearn" their privilege and to deconstruct their own authority as intellectuals. These positions appeared to question the legitimacy of outside intervention of any kind, whether intellectual or political. Although subsequently attempted by the Third world scholars anxious to move beyond standpoints that threatened to mark all feminist politics as either inauthentic or unnecessary, they were enduringly influential in highlighting the questions identity and authority in feminist studies.
The early feminist theory ignored among women, the issue of
