The article, “What did the suffragette movement in Britain really look like?” by Anna Leszkiewicz discusses the subject in reference to the upcoming movie Suffragette. The movie has been criticized for possibly “‘whitewashing’ the movement to get women the vote” and Leszkiewicz explores this idea. Through her analysis, she opens up a discussion with historians about Indian women and their involvement in the British suffragette movement, as well as the diversity of the beliefs of the many women that were a part of it. These beliefs ranged from advocacy for women of color, with an anti-racist journal that “attempted to speak ‘with’ rather than ‘about’ people of color” (Leszkiewicz) serving as an example, to racism, as many of the women held imperialist,
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Sumita Mukherjee, who researches Indian suffragettes, who says that during the time there was “an implication that white women felt they were more able to speak for Indian women than Indian women themselves,” which Mukherjee notes might not have been “overtly racist,” but was definitely imperialist. This relates to the readings about the colonial gaze, and namely, Lila Abu-Lughod’s chapter from her book Do Muslim Women Need Saving? where she discusses Americans’ inclination to save Muslim women from their own cultures. Although Leszkiewicz doesn’t discuss in depth what exactly British women did to silence Indian women, she does quote Mukherjee on the fact that these women often convinced others who would remain disenfranchised to fight for their vote with them so that “they could look after Indian women and other women in the other communes of Britain.” Assuming that British women explicitly said this at the time, it is important to note that an evolution of this idea is what has so many times the American government and Western feminists to insert themselves into the lives of Muslim women in order to ‘liberate’ them from their veils and ‘save’ them from their cultures, even though one should remember Leszkiewicz is speaking of a different group of
Sumita Mukherjee, who researches Indian suffragettes, who says that during the time there was “an implication that white women felt they were more able to speak for Indian women than Indian women themselves,” which Mukherjee notes might not have been “overtly racist,” but was definitely imperialist. This relates to the readings about the colonial gaze, and namely, Lila Abu-Lughod’s chapter from her book Do Muslim Women Need Saving? where she discusses Americans’ inclination to save Muslim women from their own cultures. Although Leszkiewicz doesn’t discuss in depth what exactly British women did to silence Indian women, she does quote Mukherjee on the fact that these women often convinced others who would remain disenfranchised to fight for their vote with them so that “they could look after Indian women and other women in the other communes of Britain.” Assuming that British women explicitly said this at the time, it is important to note that an evolution of this idea is what has so many times the American government and Western feminists to insert themselves into the lives of Muslim women in order to ‘liberate’ them from their veils and ‘save’ them from their cultures, even though one should remember Leszkiewicz is speaking of a different group of