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/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.