While Western feminist discourses are usually pictured as normative, the discrepancy between how these discourses portray “non-Western” women and how the “non-Western” women would like to be portrayed has been increasing. When realities of “non-Western” women are, through epistemological lance of Western feminist discourses, usually studied partially and stereotypically, Western feminisms are gaining their steady validations. These, of course, lead into creating further binary narratives of “us” and “them”, in which “them” symbolize “the other” and “the different” (Lazreg, 1988). Whatever has been written about “non-Western” women is therefore documented as a difference from the norm, which has been, through the means of knowledge production, considered as an objective fact.

Although such narratives emphasize the difference between women across the globe, opposite initiatives which insist that women are actually similar or even identical also exist. The concept of so called “sisterhood” is based on presumption about the same struggles against patriarchal repressions. Despite same biological sex and assumption of the same social gender, “non-Western” feminists stress that struggles against hegemonic patriarchy might not have been the same. As Spivak warns, the post- and de- colonial female subjects’ struggles are double. Women have been oppressed by both, domestic private and foreign public patriarchal spheres (Spivak, 1988). Patriarchal social structures differ and so do the struggles against them. The construction of ‘sisterhood’ in this way completely ignores the very important categories such as race, class, ethnicity, historical, political and cultural influences, which are, in the nowadays world, very significant entities in someone’s struggle. So, the postulate of transnational sisterhood on one hand creates mutual identities, and on the other hand causes imperialistic and racist effects (Amos in Parmar, 1984).

As we witness the era of globalization which indicates culture of similar and fluid identities on one side, and a rigid revival of border regimes and nationalisms that are almost necessarily patriarchally oriented on the other, we should be asking ourselves how are these phenomenas (re)shaping the relationships between women around the world. Are we sister, friends or opponents?

Aleksandra Gačić is born in 1986 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She holds a double BA degree in Philosophy of culture and Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. She persuaded a MA degree in Sociology of Gender and Sexuality at the Faculty of Social Science, University of Ljubljana with the thesis focused on post-colonial feminist movements which also allowed her to spend some time at the School of Oriental and African Studies at University of London. Currently she has been researching the colonial legacy in development strategies of family planning. As a freelancer she also works as a literary critic and a programme manager of various cultural projects related to African literature.

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I am not sure if I chose the right stream for my title of paper.