6) Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. “Introduction: Cartographers of Struggle: Third World Women and The Politics of Feminism” The Third World and the Politics of Feminism Eds. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres Indiana: Indiana University Press 1991. 1-50

Mohanty argues that the label ‘third world woman’ (1) is a criticized and disputed term preferably used in colonized civilization whose political and economic structuring has been influenced by colonial conquest. Therefore this term creates hierarchical approach to understanding the economic relationship between first and third world countries; it perpetuates the historical data of coerced missionary conquest and the modern relationship of structured dominance. On the other hand, third world women can be viewed as a source of empowerment or liberation, even though the deliberate use of the term implies struggles of oppression and experiences thus naturalizing the hierarchies. 

The term also suggests that third world cultures or ethnicity are the primary bases regarding the politics of third world women. The process of simplifying their representation, struggles and experiences are impossible, consequently resulting in western feminists generalizing about the third world woman identity. This raises contradiction that third world struggles are imagined because western feminist frame their identity out of context.

It is imagined not because it is artificial but because it suggests probable association and partnership across troublesome boundaries and community since there is affliction surrounding internal hierarchies within third world context. The idea of imagined community is a useful one because it leads us away from essentialist notions of third world feminist struggles, suggesting political rather than biological or cultural basis for alliance.

Both Lengel and Mohanty argue that power dynamics situated between first and third world countries. Lengel discusses how ethnography must be reflexive and so feminists can understand that it is no  color or sex which constructs the grounds of these struggles as argued by Mohanty. Rather it is the way we think about race, class and gender and their relation to power relations, resulting in the political links we chose to make along and between struggles creating the third world woman.