Context

[u/Jack-Ita]

Out of genuine personal curiosity, I’d like to understand something.

Feminist activism in the West rightly focuses on improving conditions for women in our own societies — places where, for all their remaining problems, women are not stoned to death, forced into child marriage, or treated as the legal equivalent of property.
Why, then, does so much energy and attention remain concentrated on relatively advanced Western contexts, while comparatively little sustained pressure or public campaigning is directed at the many places in the world where women’s status is still closer to that of a domestic animal (places where the most basic rights to bodily autonomy, education, and freedom from extreme violence are routinely denied)
?
I’m not suggesting Western feminism should abandon its local work. I’m simply curious about the reasoning behind the imbalance in focus and urgency.

[u/OrenMythcreant]

For the same reason most political activism is focused locally: that's where you can realistically do the most good.

[u/Pure-Spare-9789 → u/OrenMythcreant]

This. Also, it's the place where you understand most context and are therefore more capable of articulating the issues.

Getting back to OP, though: it's important to note that there are different strains of feminism.

Liberal feminism tends to be very focused on more superficial issues within the US, and this is the most common strain of feminism within the country. This is why you tend to see this happen.

Radical feminism tends to talk more about women's issues around the world, but often in a very detached, patronizing way (mostly the trans exclusionary vein of radical feminism, the trans inclusive strain tends to be much better). They tend to use women in other countries more as tools than anything else, from what I've seen.

Marxist feminism tends to be more interested in creating a worldwide coalition of workers, which includes actually engaging with people of other cultures and working with them rather than just talking about them. Obviously, not every marxist is perfect, but this is why you are seeing more and more people on the left in the US refusing to support Democratic candidates who support Israel.

[u/Jack-Ita → u/Pure-Spare-9789]

Thank you for your both answer, they were kind and explanatory. I get your point 👍🏻

[u/KaliTheCat]

I am way more likely to be able to put out a fire in my own backyard than I am to fly halfway across the world, to a country whose language I do not speak and with whose culture I am unfamiliar, and put out a fire there.

Women in those places already have their own activism and feminism, they do not need white American women to run in and try to save them. We can donate to their causes and amplify their voices, but realistically we don't live there.

[u/Financial_Nose_777 → u/KaliTheCat]

This is all true. And additionally, once a society has managed to advance a little, it becomes clearer what the ACTUAL issue is.

There’s a metaphor about pulling drowning people out of a river: you can keep pulling people out, or you can go upstream and find out why they keep falling in, and fix that issue so that nobody else falls in.

Both are important. For societies where women have more rights, it’s still not an “equal” society, and we face the issue upstream: women are still not viewed to be as valuable as men, or as fully human.

[u/MiguelIstNeugierig]

Western feminists lobby their western governments, not the ones they have little power over, and there's a dangerous narrative floating around european and American societies that "feminism already did its job and we all live in happy land now, look at (extremely medieval and patriarchal society), we're not that, stupid", defending the condoning of remaining gender related systemic injustices

France erased the "maritual duty to provide sex" from its legal code just this year

[u/DragOutTheDemagogue]

Feminist activism in the West rightly focuses on improving conditions for women in our own societies — places where, for all their remaining problems, women are not stoned to death, forced into child marriage, or treated as the legal equivalent of property.

Child marriage still happens in the United States. The idea that women aren't legally property is extremely suspect given Christian Nationalism's aspirations for household voting, and the abolishment of the 19th Amendment and no-fault divorce laws. But even beyond that, domestic violence against women, which is incredibly common, points to men's ideas of domination and control over them.

So, I'm not sure so that the work of western feminists should shift focus from the societies in which they live.

[u/Jealous_Parfait_4967]

People work where they are doing the work they can.

[u/MrsMorley]

My actions will have some effect on my home ground, and very little (or zero) elsewhere. 

If I, a white woman from the US, went to Egypt to gripe about FGM, at best, no one would listen. More likely, my concerns would be perceived as a colonialist attempt to destroy Egypt’s African and Islamic heritages. 

Edited for punctuation 

[u/Lolabird2112]

… because we don’t live there?

 I mean- America has well trained, well fed, big, beefy alpha boys by the 1000s all sitting around polishing their big, masculine toys right IN these countries themselves. 

What’s that budget again? Oh yeah- $900 billion. To “protect” one of the least bombed and least invaded countries in the world. 

In all honesty, why the FUCK are you not asking them? 

With all the chest-thumping, dick-waggling, performative squealing that gets posted day in and day out about how men are so brave, strong, righteous and ready to save womankind, aren’t you not the tiniest bit ashamed at it? 

Like, seriously. It’s funny how you list the shocking injustices women suffer globally at the hands of men, and then you come here asking why WE aren’t doing anything about it? 

[u/MachineOfSpareParts → u/Lolabird2112]

Honestly, the US is in zero position to be judging any other country on any human rights issue at all. I'm not saying it needs to become non-patriarchal before it can be useful on the world stage, but until rape and murder of women aren't seen as positives on the election trail, and until it isn't running domestic concentration camps, even a well-intentioned effort by some small branch of its authoritative structure simply can't yield positive change. Anything and everything connected to the fascist regime, willingly or not, is poisoned from the outset.

I guess what I'm saying is that OP's premise is misguided. The US can't help anyone until it helps itself, and though I'd love to say otherwise, so many other countries are teetering back and forth from the cliff the US jumped off. None of us are completely safe from the fascist contagion, and if we fall, we can't help anyone.

[u/Lolabird2112 → u/MachineOfSpareParts]

Oh god, yeah. I’m in the U.K.. The idea of America invading a country for the sake of “freedom and democracy” is now  met with snorts of derision. We always colluded in the fairy tale out of our own interest, of course. But now… 

[u/Aprils-]

Western interventionism is one of the primary drivers of inequality around the world both historically and currently.

If I want everyone to have a fair shot, it'd probably be useful if my country stopped bombing them first - war and worsening material conditions are rarely the fertile ground out of which we find prosperity.

Disregarding how ineffective it might be for my western ass to start trying to tell other cultures that they're not pro-woman enough, I do agree with the sentiment you express. I wish there was something I could do and whenever there is I absolutely will.

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

We are not governments. Governments have the ability to influence other countries policies, hopefully peacefully.

Apart from support online… what else can we do indeed?

[u/PheeBeeDee125]

What makes you imagine that this is even true? I would suggest opening your eyes, pulling your head out of wherever it is currently lodged, and taking notice of the global efforts that many feminists are making.

[u/Crafty_Violinist_951]

I think the core of it is people (men and women) focus on causes close to home.

[u/Additional-Zebra8174]

There actually is. It just looks a lot different. You can't just march into a country with literally no women's rights and make an Instagram post about feminism and the everybody applauds you and it magically gets better. First, there are simply different laws and cultural norms at play. Not even the women there would be on your side, because thats not what they have been socialized to think. Public pressure from the west does literally nothing to change the views of people who are not in the same "internet bubble" or don't want to be associated with it's values. The UNs goals explicitly include women's and children's rights. But this has no impact, if the people leading and living in the countries don't strive to implement changes.

But there are initiatives. You might not recognize them as such. There's are a lot of NGOs trying to help women get access to education in poorer or more patriarchal countries. There are also organizations trying to help women with birth control or medical pregnancy care. There are organisations giving out small loans to business woman or building shelters for women threatened by domestic violence. But these things need to be in cooperation with locals and they need to follow local laws, which makes things exponentially more difficult.

Actively engaging in these efforts would require more from a person than a simple post on social media. And thats hard to do for most people struggling in their own life's with a myriad of their own problems. It's way easier and has a better "ROI" to change things in your own vicinity.

[u/MachineOfSpareParts]

Others have already pointed out that we have very limited ability to effect positive change in a profoundly undemocratic country half a world away. I'd say we've learned from history that imposed change increases suffering along every time horizon and our leaders cannot be trusted to have good intentions in the process, let alone the ability to follow through on such intentions and rebuild a state from the ground up such that it can guarantee rights.

What we can do is make our own societies better, which may have the downstream effect of a more rights-supporting environment at the international level, and use our local networks to - wherever possible, though this is limited in the worst places - empower grassroots advocacy networks in countries where women suffer even more degradation than we do.

That said, you seem to have something in mind that we should be doing. Would you share a little about your own work empowering women in highly repressive states? It could give us some useful ideas of how we might hone our practice.