with the problem of development. Regardless of whether scholars within this tra-
dition consider women as beneficiaries or victims, the scholarly literature on de-
velopment generally fails to consider women as agents and activists in their own
right. The Challenge of Local Feminisms seeks to rectify this imbalance by focusing
on women's movements in postcolonial nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin Amer-
ica, where such movements are often thought to be absent. Closer examination re-
veals our ignorance rather than their absence.

The second tendency is to characterize women's movements as products of
modernization or development. Thus, sociologists Janet Chafetz, Anthony
Dworkin, and Diane Margolis argue that the growth of women's movements is
correlated with industrialization and urbanization because they bring into being
the middle class, which forms the backbone of women's movements. ² Expanding
educational and job opportunities increase women's capabilities and ambitions
and make feminism more attractive to them. Thus, according to this view, wom-
en's movements are strongest in the most industrialized nations.

The chapters in this book show that, while women's movements have often
been predominantly middle class, poor women have been at the forefront in many
places. In India, the women's movement has been radicalized by the activism of
poor women, who have not only raised employment and wage demands but have
also fought domestic violence. ³ In the United States, Leslie Wolfe and Jennifer
Tucker show that poor women, particularly women of color, have redefined the
priorities of the women's movement and sustained it amid the challenges it has
confronted in the 1990s. In a similar vein, Ethel Klein, in another book, The Wom-
en's Movements of the United States and Western Europe, finds that black women
have been much more receptive than white women to the demands of the wom-
en's movement. As recently as 1970, only 37 percent of white women compared to
60 percent of black women believed that feminist activism was necessary; by 1985
the gap had narrowed, but black women were still significantly more supportive
than white women of women's rights (78 percent versus 72 percent). ⁴

Even more problematic is the assumption of the second approach that femi-
nism is the outcome of a linear process of socioeconomic change. It cannot ex-
plain why women's movements are stronger in the Philippines and India, for ex-
ample, than in the more industrialized nations of Russia and Eastern Europe. As
this book demonstrates, a much more important influence on women's move-
ments than the level of development is the extent of state control. Women's move-
ments tend to be weak where state control permeates civil society and strong
where state control is or has been relaxed.

An even deeper problem lies in the tautological nature of the argument: By
identifying women's movements as middle-class movements, Chafetz and
Dworkin define out of existence movements from which the middle class is absent
or unimportant. I argue that women's movements comprise a range of struggles
by women against gender inequality. These movements may be independently or-

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