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The significance of feminisms appears and disappears from where you stand. In the 20th century, feminisms of different contexts have been the very basis of struggles for equity and justice at the same as time as they have faced charges of illegitimacy or irrelevance. As in the last century, the current era can be read not as the histories of feminisms only but as chronicles of feminisms intertwined unevenly with other movements for social, political, and economic justice. In this sense, feminisms have disappeared or metamorphosed.¹ Both verbs signify either that many feminisms are not recognizable as some had known or interpreted them to exist, or that they have altered beyond familiar shapes to forms that have displaced or substituted them. These transformations have led to debates on purist and reconstituted versions; these disputes have, in fact, maintained the vitality of feminisms.²

This chapter describes the contribution of Third World feminism for a materially grounded understanding of inclusive education that can make the transnational significance of this field more robust and enduring. The work of Third World feminist scholar, C. T. Mohanty, forms the central focus of the discussion, which develops linkages between the philosophical roots of her teachings and the work of some disability studies scholars. I argue that a historical-materialist understanding of disability is necessary for developing a nuanced theory of inclusive education that confers significance to the element of process. This supports a more expansive conceptualization of inclusive education that can avoid the theory-practice divide which leaves schooling systems around the world at hierarchized locations of ‘success’ or ‘failure’ in realizing its principles.

The purpose of this paper is to offer novel insights into: knowledge of proto-feminism through description and analysis of the rule of the seventh century female Emperor Wu Zetian; postcolonial theory by revealing the existence and proto-feminist activities of a non-western female leader; and the literature on gender and invisibility through a study of a leading figure that is relatively unknown to western feminists and is even, in feminist terms, something of a neglected figure.

In order to examine Wu’s proto-feminist practices as recorded in historical materials, we use critical hermeneutics as a tool for textual interpretation, through the following four stages: choosing texts from historical records and writings of Wu; analyzing the historical sociocultural context; analyzing the relationship between the text and the context; and offering a conceptual framework as a richer explanation.

Wu’s life activities demonstrate proto-feminism in late seventh century China in at least four aspects: gender equality in sexuality, in social status, in politics, and women’s pursuit of power and leadership.

Future research may dig into the paradox of Wu’s proto-feminist practices, the relationship between organizational power and feminism/proto-feminism, and the ways in which Wu’s activities differ from other powerful women across cultures, etc.

The study encourages a rethink of women and leadership style in non-western thought.

The study supports Calás and Smircich’s 2005 call for greater understanding of feminist thought outside of western thought and a move to transglobal feminism.

This study recovers long lost stories of women leadership that are “invisible” in many ways in the historical narratives, and contributes to postcolonial feminism by revealing the existence of indigenous proto-feminist practice in China long before western-based feminism and postcolonial feminism emerged.

The discourse of the “poor oppressed other woman” has been reinvigorated by the conservative turn in international politics. Thus, the Bush administration's deployment of her to justify the war in Afghanistan has been roundly criticized by feminist theorists (Braidotti, 2005; Youngs, 2006, p. 9). In this light, this chapter's criticism of another figure of “the third world woman”, the apparently more positive “super heroine” of women's liberation (see Ram, 1991) or worthy recipient of development might seem churlish and misplaced. However, the super heroine of development is also constrained by and assimilated within the dominant discourses of emancipation and development (as Mohanty, 1991, so famously argued): women are “objectified as beneficiaries and victims” (Youngs, 2006, p. 9).

The papers explores the emergence of an ideological consolidation amidst the theory of intersectionality put forth by Crenshaw and Mohanty's transnational feminist thought vis-à-vis the thematic concerns of Punjabi immigrant fiction.

The paper attempts to follow a qualitative approach in terms of uncovering the various facets of Punjabi Diasporic Fiction vis-à-vis reflecting how intersectionality defines the diasporic condition of third-world immigrant women through contextualizing Fauzia Rafique's text, Skeena.

The performed study depicts the intellectual consonance between Crenshaw and Mohanty's theories and how immigrant literature aids Crenshaw and Mohanty's hypothesis into praxis.

The research majorly focuses upon the works of the Punjabi diaspora and studies the diaspora's implications while analyzing how the diaspora contributes in rupturing contemporary hegemonic structures.

The paper has been originally drafted through the honest research performed by the author.

Feminist perspectives from women of color did not emerge solely as a result from racism in the white feminist movements; such an assumption negates the agency of feminists of color (Roth, 2004). Instead, feminist perspectives by women of color emerged from historical and sociopolitical dynamics within their own communities of origin, as well as in relationship to each other, including in opposition to, and at times in concert with, the white feminist movements. This chapter explores the development, complexities, and unique contributions of Womanist, Black Feminist Thought, hip-hop, Chicana, Native American, global, Asian American, Arab American and ecofeminism. These feminist perspectives include overarching themes, such as the intersectionality of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, ability, age, religion, nationality, and other important identities and issues. Each contemporary feminist theory also explores the interstices of issues such as education, health, economics, reproduction, sociopolitical, historical, organizational, technological, and myriad interrelated dynamics.

This chapter focuses on how the repression of political ideologies can silence feminist voices. It examines how writings by women working with the U.S. Communist Party in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s have been overlooked even though they presaged important linchpins of U.S. second-wave feminist thought.

This study is based on historical and archival research.

Decades before the rise of second-wave feminism, women in the CPUSA had: (1) produced a political economy of domestic labor; (2) employed an intersectional analysis of the interlocking oppressions of race, gender, class, and nation; and (3) called for a global feminist analysis that linked these multiple oppressions to colonialism and imperialism.

This study illustrates the costs of political repression and how the canon of feminist thought can be enhanced by resuscitating subjugated knowledges.

Too little attention has focused on the silencing of women because of their political ideologies. This chapter addresses this lacuna in feminist studies and calls into question the oft-repeated notion that the periods between the waves of U.S. feminism were times of movement stagnation. It shows how theory construction can flourish even when feminist activism wanes.

In 1974, in a lecture at Stanford University, entitled, “Marxism and Feminism” (published in the same year in the journal, Women's Studies), Herbert Marcuse (1974b, p. 279) stated that the Women's Liberation Movement was “perhaps the most important and potentially the most radical political movement that we have, even if the consciousness of this fact has not yet penetrated the Movement as a whole”. Marcuse saw the liberating potential of the movement in its critical consciousness – the light it shone on the invisible structures of oppression inherent in a patriarchal, capitalist system and the knowledge that the dismantling of this system was necessary to have a truly free world.