Feminism, Latina

Eurocentric Feminist Frameworks

Eurocentric feminist frameworks ignore differences among women in terms of class backgrounds, religious traditions, sexual preferences, races, ages, cultural experiences, and regional variations and instead place the most focus on a middle-class White female reality. Part of the dilemma concerning a Eurocentric feminist framework stems from the White male system through which it appears to operate.

Anne Wilson Schaef introduced the concept of the White male system. As she defined it, this system is [Page 491]managed by and for the advancement and domination of White male leadership, placing women and people of color into an inferior status without regard to their socioeconomic background. This system is maintained through embedded discriminatory practices such as institutionalized racism and modern sexism, she said. According to Schaef's theory, the White male system controls nearly every aspect of Western culture. However, its grip is maintained with subtlety; by law, there are sanctions against outright discrimination on the basis of race, creed, national origin, and the like. Yet according to Schaef, male-dominated Eurocentric frameworks exist in every type of institutionalized setting where people traverse daily—places of employment; institutions of primary, secondary, and higher education; lending and banking organizations; places of religious worship; health care facilities; the military and governmental entities; and noninstitutional settings such as places of residence and community life.

Getting into the White male system is what women and others in Western society have been taught they must do to survive, Schaef asserted; hence, a Latina feminist consciousness works against this system, and its development takes place within this resistance. Schaef proposed that the Latina feminist movement must acknowledge and address four fundamental myths of the White male system. Responding to the myth that the White male system is the only thing that exists, Latina feminists offer a discourse about including differences in ethnicity, race, phenotype, regional culture, religious affiliation, class, generation, political orientation, sexual orientation, and bilingual language acquisition. Latina feminists resist the second myth—that the White male system is innately superior—and contest their imposed inferiority, initiating a dialectic that centers on Latina empowerment and the ways in which they have surmounted obstacles placed before them and have met parity with the status quo. Latina feminists view the third myth—that the White male system knows and understands everything—as not only misleading but also creating an even deeper barrier to equity among all women, especially women of color and in particular Latinas. The fourth myth that Schaef proposed is that it is possible to be totally logical, rational, and objective. Latina feminists argue that people are simply not capable of being totally logical, rational, and objective; considering the various forms of oppression that Latinas and other people of color face, this model is viewed as particularly unrealistic and problematic.

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