The Asian American Movement

3. Race versus Gender: The Asian American Women's Movement

72 3 Race versus Gender: The Asian American Women's Movement Hey, Brother, I've been thinking. I've been hoping that some day, some day you'd see. I've counselled, been quiet, I cook, I clean, I buy it. And now I'm ready for some time for me. -"Say What You Will" Back to Back music album The Asian American women's movement has been and still is one of the most dynamic elements within the Movement. Its participants have been mainly middle-class Asian American women responding to oppression in both their ethnic and mainstream societies- as individuals, in small informal groups , or as members of large structured organizations. Though the Asian American women's movement has never been a single entity with a unified theory and agenda, it has promoted personal and group empowerment and continues to struggle for the right of Asian American women to participate equally in a pluralistic society that has yet to be fully realized in the United States. Begun as a desire for sisterhood and in reaction to sexism in the Movement, it has gone through two overlapping phases, evolving from a relatively homogeneous local phenomenon into one that is internally diverse but national in scope, in which women from many Asian ethnic groups integrate locaL nationaL and international concerns. During its first phase, Asian American women started informal women 's Copyrighted Material Race versus Gender: 73 groups for mutual support and political study. Out of these groups came projects that attempted to ameliorate the conditions of women , giving the women's movement visibility and legitimacy in the Asian American community. But these informal women's groups met too sporadically, were too uncoordinated , too unstructured, and too localized to be politically effective. During the second phase, the women's movement moved beyond the Asian American Movement to become a recognizable force in its own right. Instead of a few informal women's groups, there are now many formal Asian American women's organizations with interregional links and national visibility and an unprecedented opportunity to improve the status of Asian/Pacific women throughout the country . And these formal organizations have attracted many more women, albeit mainly those with professional occupations and interests. Still, many of the issues as well as the participants remain the same. The best-attended workshops at conferences continue to be the ones on man-woman relations. Quite a few of the current leaders trace the roots of their activism back to their involvement with their ethnic communities and the Movement, including left groups. That is why new organizations continue to support "progressive causes." The Asian American women's movement has been mistakenly viewed as one of the token ethnic groups within the mainstream women's liberation movement; in actuality, it was independent and parallel.' Most women activists joined exclusively Asian American groups or organizations, though some " struggled against racism/sexism , in the absence of a 'critical mass,' usually through coalitions with other women of color." 2 While the Asian American women's movement certainly has roots in the women's liberation movement, they are shallow ones. As a predominantly European American phenomenon grappling with the " feminine mystique," that is, the belief that a woman's role should be that of a housewife-mother, and advocating employment outside the house as a solution to it,] the women's liberation movement initially seemed irrelevant to Asian American women whose self-image and self-esteem came from attachment to family. And , whether they wanted to or not, many of them were already working outside the home , usually in low-wage occupations in a racially stratified labor market, to supplement the family income. The tendency of European American feminists "to polarize the sexes , encourage narcissism , and deprecate individual obligation to others" ~ alienated Asian American women who identified closely with their ethnic community. Though European American feminists bracketed sexism with racism (and attributed both to the Copyrighted Material 74 : Chapter 3 existing social structure), through a mixture of ignorance and indifference, they all but forgot the latter. They spoke of universal sisterhood, yet their actions reflected their racial biases, a problem that persists to the present. As Patricia Collins has noted, "Even today African-American, Hispanic, Native American , and Asian-American women criticize the feminist movement and its scholarship for being racist and overly concerned with white, middle-class women's issues." 5 Since the 1960s, however, white feminists have...