In “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” Chandra Talpade Mohanty grounds her feminist critique by examining influential Western feminist studies that claim to analyze the lives of Third World women. Rather than treating feminism as a unified or innocent project, Mohanty demonstrates how particular feminist texts—despite progressive intentions—produce knowledge that echoes colonial ways of seeing. By closely reading these writers and their case studies, Mohanty reveals how Western feminist scholarship often constructs Third World women as universally oppressed and culturally backward, while positioning Western women as liberated and authoritative subjects of feminist knowledge.
One of the most significant examples Mohanty discusses is Fran Hosken’s work on female genital mutilation (FGM), especially The Hosken Report. Mohanty argues that Hosken presents African and Middle Eastern women as passive victims of violent traditions, without sufficiently analyzing the historical, economic, and political contexts in which such practices exist. From a feminist perspective, Mohanty does not deny that FGM is oppressive; rather, she critiques the way Hosken’s analysis treats Third World cultures as inherently barbaric and patriarchal while ignoring Western forms of gendered violence. By isolating FGM from colonial histories and global power relations, Hosken’s work constructs Third World women as helpless and in need of Western intervention, thereby reinforcing a colonial “savior” narrative within feminism.
Mohanty also critiques Juliette Minces’s studies of women in the Middle East, particularly her work on Muslim women and family structures. Minces tends to portray Muslim societies as uniformly patriarchal and women as universally subordinated by Islam. Mohanty points out that such analyses rely on generalized claims about religion and culture, rather than examining how class, state policies, colonial histories, and economic conditions shape women’s lives differently within the same region. From a feminist standpoint, Mohanty shows that this kind of scholarship reduces complex social relations to cultural explanations and treats Islam as a monolithic source of women’s oppression, reinforcing Orientalist stereotypes under the guise of feminist critique.
Another important set of case studies Mohanty analyzes comes from feminist research on marriage, family, and reproduction, especially studies that assume practices such as arranged marriage automatically signify women’s lack of agency. Mohanty argues that these writers apply Western liberal feminist notions of choice and autonomy without questioning their cultural specificity. Feminist scholars, she notes, often interpret non-Western women’s decisions through a framework that equates freedom exclusively with Western individualism. As a result, women’s
strategies of negotiation, consent, or resistance within family structures are overlooked. Mohanty insists that a feminist analysis must recognize that agency does not always appear as open rebellion and that women may exercise power in ways that do not conform to Western feminist expectations.
Mohanty further critiques development-oriented feminist studies, particularly those focused on labor and economic participation, which portray Third World women as universally poor, uneducated, and economically dependent. These studies often treat women as a reserve labor force exploited by both tradition and modernization, without examining how global capitalism, colonial economic restructuring, and multinational corporations shape women’s labor conditions.
Mohanty argues that such feminist development discourse frames Third World women as problems to be solved, rather than as political actors embedded in global systems of exploitation. From a feminist perspective, this approach shifts attention away from structural inequalities and instead reproduces a narrative of Third World women’s perpetual dependency. Across these case studies, Mohanty identifies a recurring methodological pattern: Western feminist writers often begin with the assumption of women’s oppression and then use examples to confirm it. This circular reasoning leads to what Mohanty calls the production of the “Third World woman” as a stable, ahistorical subject. Feminist scholarship, she argues, turns women into objects of analysis rather than subjects of history. The problem is not the intention to expose oppression, but the failure to analyze how oppression is produced differently across contexts and how women actively respond to it. Mohanty contrasts these Western feminist approaches with the potential of materialist and historically grounded feminist analysis. She argues that feminist theory must locate women’s lives within specific relations of power shaped by colonialism, nationalism, class struggle, and global capitalism. Instead of treating culture as the primary cause of oppression, feminism should examine how culture itself is shaped by historical and political forces. This shift allows Third
World women to appear not as passive victims but as agents whose struggles are meaningful within their own contexts.
Ultimately, Mohanty’s engagement with these writers and case studies serves a larger feminist purpose. She is not rejecting feminism, nor is she dismissing Western feminist concerns. Rather, she is demanding an ethical and accountable feminist scholarship that does not reproduce the inequalities it seeks to dismantle. By exposing how specific feminist texts participate in colonial discourses, Mohanty calls for a transnational feminism grounded in dialogue, difference, and political solidarity rather than universal claims.
In conclusion, “Under Western Eyes” is powerful precisely because Mohanty shows how colonialism operates within feminist scholarship itself through concrete examples and influential writers. Her feminist intervention urges scholars to rethink how knowledge is produced, whose voices are centered, and how solidarity can be built without erasing difference. The essay remains central to feminist studies because it transforms feminism from a universalizing discourse into a critical, self-reflexive, and decolonial political practice.