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"modernize," as long as women remain pure and untouched reposi–
tories of traditional values . The second problem is that there is a dif–
ference between cultural judgements and moral judgements, and
while the distinction may be extremely difficult to make, that is no
excuse for just dismissing it.
"The primitive woman has no choice," Evans-Pritchard smugly
noted. And while it may not be the task of anthropology to give her
one, neither is it anthropology's task to reconcile her with injustices
by pretending that one believes things are fine as they are.
If
vac–
cinations are available, and people take their sons and not their
daughters to have them, then this meets Johan Galtung's criteria of
"structural violence," present when a society has the means to im–
prove the survival chances of a certain group but refrains from doing
so. As in the past, anthropology has paved the way for other Western
emissaries, and in contributing to the taboo on change for women,
current anthropology is encouraging a structure of Western develop–
mental aid that "produces fatter sheep and more powerless women,"
as one participant in a United States aid project self-critically noted.
Arab women social scientists are vehement in their criticism of
women's traditional place. Even the traditional women themselves
are able, if asked, to articulate their grievances. Why, then, have
Western women succumbed to the ban on criticism?
First, I believe, they are affected by a kind of Third World
trauma that has overtaken all Westerners ofliberal persuasion. The
sight of the Third World masses marching through the streets in mil–
lions to demand the return to the chador, the reinstatement of reli–
gion, and a chance at martyrdom on the warfront has left many
Western observers with the paralyzing feeling that their standards of
understanding are really and totally inadequate .
This conclusion has been abetted, in the case of Western
women, by certain unfortunate encounters with a particular group
of women from the Third World. I refer to the women who typically
turn up at international women's conferences, frequently in the offi–
cial delegations of their governments. The position they take at these
fora may be paraphrased roughly as follows: Whatever problems we
have, and we cannot remember inviting either your unnecessary
comment nor your unwelcome assistance in solving them, are your
fault in the first place. It was Western interference, colonial and neo–
colonial and culturally imperialistic, that ruined the situation of
women as it ruined everything else in our society . Furthermore, your
situation as women here in the depraved West is worse than ours,
