Scholars often located third world women in terms of underdevelopment, oppressive traditions, high illiteracy, rural and urban poverty, religious fanaticism, and “overpopulation” of particular Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and Latin American countries (47). Universal images of Third World woman: the veiled woman, the powerful mother, the chaste virgin, the obedient wife, and so on, which exist in universal, ahistorical splendor, set in motion a coloinialist discourse that exercises a very specific power in defining, coding, and maintaining existing First/Third World connections (41). Mohanty says we must be aware of Third World difference, which is caused by an ethnocentric, paternalistic attitude that defines third world women as: religious (not progressive), family-oriented (traditional), legally unsophisticated (unconscious of their own rights), illiterate (ignorant), domestic (backward), and sometimes revolutionary (40).
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