"Gendered Resistance, Feminist Veiling, Islamic Feminism"‪.‬

Prelude The strand of feminism that assumes a universality of womanhood, often expressed in activists' phraseology by terms such as 'global sisterhood', has been irreversibly challenged by anthropology on systematic ethnographic and theoretical grounds (see Moore 1988: 7; 10-11; 186-195). Moore convincingly demonstrated that "[A]nthropology is in a position to provide a critique of feminism based on the deconstruction of the category 'woman'" (11). Moore goes on to say that cross-cultural data demonstrate a Western bias in much mainstream feminist theorizing. She describes how black feminists, for example, regarded the focus of 'women as women' in politics and writing which assumes a necessary unity and solidarity among all women "privileges one particular discourse about women or 'womanhood' over others" (190). This assumption and privileging have been also critiqued by Arab and Muslim feminists.