There are a number of concerns that many transnational feminists focus on. Issues of gender, languages, imperialism, colonialism, economics, human rights, race, psychology, and nationalism encompass many areas of concern.
Gender Transnational feminisms examine how powers of colonialism,
modernity,
postmodernity, and globalization construct gender norms, or normative conceptions of masculinity and femininity among the subaltern, Third World, and colonized.
Second-wave feminism in the 1980s started to explore gender instead of sex as a category of distinction between people. With a recognition that biology can identify differences between people, feminists focused on the system of gender norms as an ongoing, changeable process that shaped people's lives and behaviors. This production of critique was largely used in the
Global North and is a liberal feminist ideology. Though it did not broaden the discussion of workplace discrimination and
reproductive rights for heterosexual female identified people of the first world, this wave was exclusionary of Third world feminist and developing countries. Second wave feminism rejected critic of inequalities due to class, race, sex, socioeconomic status, legal status, age, ability and religion. With global capitalism causing more people to migrate away from their homes in search of jobs, migration has affected genders unequally, and is thus a key concern in transnational feminisms and feminist economics. Women currently account for roughly half of long-distance migration, and overwhelmingly marginalized women of color bear the burden of global capitalism.
Human rights Because the original design of human rights, particularly as constituted in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was designed to fit into specific legal categories, it reflected the "needs and values of affluent white Western men" who were the subjects of the legal system. Transnational feminists argue that human rights sometimes do not take into account other conceptions of rights, and do not recognize the experiences of women, in particular those who are "indigenous, Third World, women of color, poor, rural, disabled and
queer". and even rights tied to keeping these private for women. However, human rights discourse doesn't largely concern itself with these areas. Race plays an important role in shaping not only historical interactions between groups, but also present day migrations. Race also plays an important role in many transnational interactions shaping conceptions of
cultures and groups of people. Race is a key component in transnational feminism, race and ethnicity contribute to the complexities of why globalization and neoliberal agendas are imposed on certain groups (colonized; read: marginalized groups) over others (colonizer; read: imperial elitist).
Economics Some transnational feminist groups focus on
economic issues. Many of the most important issues to transnational feminists revolve around economics. For many transnational feminists like
Mohanty,
global capitalism is a serious problem and one that hurts
women, particularly
Third World women. Mohanty argues strongly against global capitalism. She considers herself an
anti-capitalist and is opposed to
globalization. According to
Audre Lorde, empowering people who are doing work, like educating others, does not mean using privilege to overstep and overpower groups like educators. Instead, these people must use their privilege to hold the door open for more allies to step in and support groups like educators or less-industrialized groups of women.
Colonialism Colonialism is one of the most important areas of concern for transnational feminism. Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan talk about how colonialism has created situations of gender inequality that continue to disadvantage the lives of women today. Sometimes this inequality takes the form of
neocolonialism, which manifests in the way that First World or Western feminists talk about women from the Third World, creating a binary of Us vs. Them rather than developing a cultural understanding of the differences each respective group has. These ways of talking do not consider colonialist histories and tend to portray Third World women as isolated from flows of global capital and information, and therefore passive, helpless, and uninformed. Such Western depictions of non-Western women, Grewal and Kaplan argue, only perpetuate hierarchies that place Western theorists at the superior center and non-Western theorists and people at the inferior margins.
Imperialism Imperialism has had numerous effects on people. Imperialism has often been the impetus for colonialism. Transnational feminism examines not only colonial history, but how imperialism may have contributed to that history. Imperialism is not an issue of only the past, but one of modern-day concern. For example, the United States occupations of
Iraq and
Afghanistan can be seen as imperialistic in nature. The United States has also had a substantial military presence in
Pakistan. Some transnational feminists argue this kind of imperialistic nature has led to the increased
fundamentalism and
extremism in Pakistan, which can be seen in the
Zina laws. Some transnational feminist are antagonistic to nationalism because of its history of being a tool of control "the retrospective activity of nation-building in modernity is always predicated upon women as trope".
The nation-state Because global capitalism is one of the driving forces for much of the inequalities that transnational feminists are addressing with, and nation-states produce and reproduce structures of global capitalism, nation-states are important to look at in transnational feminist practices. Today, there is also a wave of transnational feminism with "important currents of feminism are challenging the state-territorial framing of political claims-making" and that rejects "the state-territorial frame" itself. They point out that the actions of one state can and tend to affect the lives of women in surrounding territories, and even throughout the world with more powerful actors. Furthermore, the actions of non-state actors, especially those of international organizations, of the governmental and non-governmental varieties, have huge impacts on the lives of women without consideration of state borders. Likewise, communication at the scale it exists today can alter the lives of women, especially with "global
mass media and cyber technology". Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan (2010) noted that although only 1/8 of people worldwide live in regions that fall into the
WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) societal classification, 60–90% of psychology studies are performed on participants from these areas. They gave examples of results that differ significantly between people from WEIRD and tribal cultures, including the
Müller-Lyer illusion. Arnett (2008),
Altmaier and Hall (2008), and Morgan-Consoli et al. (2018) all view the Western bias in research and theory as a serious problem considering psychologists are increasingly applying psychological principles developed in
WEIRD regions in their research, clinical work, and consultation with populations around the world. Kurtis, Adams, Grabe, Else-Quest, Collins, Machizawa, and Rice have begun to articulate a
transnational feminist psychology (also called
transnational psychology) that applies transnational feminist lenses to the field of psychology to study, understand, and address the impact of colonization, imperialism, and globalization. A 2015 Summit organized by Machizawa, Collins, and Rice further developed
transnational psychology by inspiring presentations and publications that applied transnational feminist principles to psychological topics. == Networks and organizations ==