The agenda of contemporary western feminism focuses on equal participation in work and education, reproductive rights, and sexual freedom. But what does feminism mean to the women of rural India who work someone else's fields, young Thai girls in the sex industry in Bangkok, or Filipino maids working for wealthy women in Hong Kong? In this 1998 book, Chilla Bulbeck presents a bold challenge to the hegemony of white, western feminism in this incisive and wide-ranging exploration of the lived experiences of 'women of colour'. She examines debates on human rights, family relationships, sexuality, and notions of the individual and community to show how their meanings and significance in different parts of the world contest the issues which preoccupy contemporary Anglophone feminists. She then turns the focus back on Anglo culture to illustrate how the theories and politics of western feminism are viewed by non-western women.

"...the explosion of postcolonial and 'Third World' writing reminds us that we of the dominant cultural group need new ways of knowing....Re-orienting Western Feminisms will go a long way toward helping many of us achieve this goal....[It] is an invaluable intruduction to feminist theorizing as a political process." Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology