We may still live in male-dominated societies today, but there is no doubt that the feminist movement has significantly contributed to the promotion of women’s rights and welfare in different parts of the world. At the same time, though, short of being incurably myopic one has to recognise that it has also failed abysmally. This failure is largely due to a small group of self-proclaimed feminist theorists and leaders – the madames conne tout – who have been very vocal... above other women’s heads. 
   
Feminism and left-wing political movements (Marxist/Socialist/Communist parties) of the seventies have at the very least one thing in common: their leadership has grown increasingly rigid, sectarian, dogmatic, patronising and brutal. As a result, they have antagonised the very people they were seeking to win over in order to carry out the struggle for the creation of a more egalitarian world. If people (the masses) feel alienated by your discourses, however radical these may be to you in theory, you achieve nothing or very little in practice and you run the risk of becoming dinosaurs. Allow me a small detour.

My father died when I was only six. I was raised in a poor, destitute, largely female household. It was only ‘natural’ therefore that quite early on in my life I would be drawn to radical politics and this is when I also espoused the feminist cause. When I met the late Peter Craig in the mid-seventies, he lent me a book (which he had borrowed from Dev Virahsawmy) called Sexual Politics by Kate Millett.  This book has always been regarded as a feminist classic. At about the same time, there was another cult feminist book – you’ve probably guessed it: The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer. And of course Le Deuxième Sexe by Simone de Beauvoir.

When Kate Millett was asked recently about feminism, she said: “It drives everyone crazy”. Either she was joking or she meant that something had gone wrong. I think the French notion of a boutade might explain this better. Millett was making a serious point, jokingly.

Germaine Greer is still very much in the media. But she hardly has any of that aura which once elevated her to the status of a semi-goddess. There is much in The Female Eunuch which is still interesting but the nagging question is how much of it is still relevant, or ever was for that matter?

Greer has come under the most savage attack by a fellow writer, Louis Nowra. In an essay published in this month’s issue of the Australian The Monthly, Nowra wrote that Germaine Greer has ‘no idea what makes women tick.’

But, at one time the hardcore feminism of Greer et al had its followers, some of whom would later cling vaguely to its ideas and lived with many paradoxes and contradictions. Let me quote four personal anecdotes if only for what they might reveal:

a)    In the 1980s, in London, I was quite close to a couple – both Mauritian students. I remember telling them that instead of bringing more harmony between men and women, feminism (or at least some feminist ideas) appeared to cause more disharmony within couples, whether married or not. She was startled, turning depressingly glum; he remained quiet but with a wry smile under his thick moustache. In fact, unknowingly I had put my finger on something which was very much at the core of that couple’s turbulent relationship at the time. (But, thank God, they have been happily married ever after... Later the woman, in a gesture showing me her fingers, joyfully proclaimed: Mo met bizous. Mo enn fam bourgeoise!).

b)    In Tamarin in the 1990s, during a conversation I was having with a friend (a militante de la première heure), she asked me emphatically: “Mais dis moi, dis moi quel couple (parmi nos amis) qui a tenu, quel mariage qui a duré?”

c)    Once I gave a Mauritian friend in London a copy of Benoîte Groult’s Ainsi soit-elle. She recoiled in amazement when she looked at the cover of the book, which had a photo of a woman’s eyes complete with a very colourful makeup. That friend (who later would claim that she has the biggest collection of books about women) clearly thought that I had displayed bad taste by offering her enn liv nimport. In fact the book chronicles the history of the feminist movement in France!

d)    At Gatwick airport, a Mauritian woman who always claims to be a feminist – she is in fact a bloody back-rider – became extremely angry when she realised that her flight had been cancelled because there were no meals for the passengers, the caterers having gone on strike. But, upon learning that the strikers were Asian women who worked long hours and earned very little, she was rather embarrassed and started changing her tune.
 
There is nothing trivial in the above. I think there was a big discrepancy between what feminist theorists like Greer were advocating on the one hand and the aspirations of many women on the other.
It was thought that women should liberate themselves by rejecting the consumer society and all that goes with it: jewellery, makeup, bras, fashionable clothes, shoes, bags and other accessories. A woman should not enter into a marriage, which was seen as the ultimate in terms of women’s oppression. Women should avoid having babies, etc etc. Just like in the heyday of student revolts – those of May 1968 in Paris, for instance – it was believed that the family unit would implode, and free love became the mantra of the young revolutionaries.

A very different picture emerges today. A complete swing of the pendulum. The fashion industry has proved to be more robust and enduring than ever, even claiming its victims – witness anorexia. So Greer may still have a point, but we’ve moved a long way and feminist movements have failed to adapt themselves so as to be a touch more meaningful to their audiences. Hence their rejection by many women. More painfully perhaps for some old feminists is the fact that fashion and cosmetics are not solely the preserve of the younger generation: they too have turned to them with a vengeance, as if to console themselves for having wasted the best years of their lives preaching in the desert and now trying their best to look nice.

In France, Fadela Amera founded the feminist movement called ‘Ni putes, ni soumises’. Today the young women ‘issues de l’immigration’ (ie whose parents had come from the Maghreb) claim to be ‘Ni féministes, ni soumises’. And Rachida Dati – I know, I know, she is not exactly a reference! – on a recent visit to London,  said: “Femininity is part of being a woman. It is part of my identity... it’s important for me to hold on to it.” This daughter of poor Arab immigrants who rose to become Justice Minister is now savouring the joys of motherhood with her little 14 months’ old Zohra...

Having said that, I don’t think that feminism is dead. In Mauritius, it is at a crossroads. It needs to reassess the situation – a soul-searching exercise. It needs to learn from its past mistakes and reinvent itself. Above all a renewed, revived and reinvigorated feminism in Mauritius must of necessity be culturally sensitive in order to be or become a genuine, credible and formidable movement. It must cease to be euro-centric. If anything, it must draw inspiration from the real feminists of today – they are to be found on the Indian subcontinent, in the Middle East, Africa, Central and South America. And for heaven’s sake, it must stop being so anti-men! That is why it is so important for a Mauritian brand of Feminism to spell out what it stands for. I do not subscribe to the school of thought of ‘raving’ feminists who think (certainly thought at one time) that all men must be castrated! I mean, can you imagine a society without any men? Remember the poet-singer’s song: La femme est l’avenir de l’homme.

There is an awful lot to be done. Women who carry on with the struggle and fight for equality (at home, work or public life) must remember that men – at least some men – are not necessarily their enemies, but their allies.