Wost 4103H and 5104 - International Feminist Theories

One issue from the Schutte article I hope we can take up in class is middle- and upper-class "feminist" women's exploitation of lower-class women as domestic servants -- especially the last full paragraph of page 222. (I tried to pull out a quote but it was crazy long.) Hiring someone else to do their housework (and paying them lousy wages) frees these more privileged women to work outside the home and possibly accomplish things for women and for feminism in the public sphere. I thought it was interesting that Schutte wrote about this not as an accusation, calling the employers hypocrites or blind to the exploitation their practicing against other women... but as a choice, "these women generally opt for a personal solution." I assume Patricia Ocampo and Mercedes Sola employed poor women and the fact that they didn't have to worry about that housework allowed them time to work for women's issues in other ways. Do you think this issue is specific to Latin America or to developing societies? In the US it's much less common to actually employ someone to do domestic work, but most of us are benefiting in less direct ways from the work done by less privileged women for not enough money.

An idea touched on by both Ocampo and Schutte that bugged me a little bit was that women as mothers suffer when injustice and violence are commited against their children. Ocampo talked about how women oppose war because of this, and Schutte mentioned the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo organizing to protest human rights violations. Schutte also writes "Women who are the sisters, mothers, wives, or loved ones of victimized men and children identify strongly with their suffering" (217) I don't really understand whether she's saying that women identify with the suffering of others more strongly than do men, or if it's just the opposite, that the widespread poverty and violence in their societies cause poor Latin American women to identify with other oppressed poor people rather than with other women, (especially since they are sometimes being exploited by other women).