PhD student Keya Khandaker and Dr Lata Narayanaswamy co-author blog article for the Ghent Centre for Global Studies
The blog article is the last of a series entitled ‘Debating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’, which aimed to foster critical debates on the SDGs by discussing them from different angles.
Keya Khandaker and Dr Lata Narayanaswamy question the “white, liberal feminist myopia’ of the SGDs, ‘which focuses on the fiction of the ‘Third World Woman’ in need of saving or ‘empowerment’, rather than tackling structural inequalities and propose a decolonial feminist approach to address the intersectional challenges we collectively face on the path towards global justice.”
Talking about the article, Keya told us: “In this blog providing a ‘feminist perspective’ on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, we wanted to highlight the vision of 'feminism' and the vision of ‘female’ being put forward by the agenda. The SDGs valorise a white, Liberal, heteronormative and Western-centric feminism, which makes no room for structural inequalities and the exploitative modes of capitalism, race, or intersecting marginalities.”
Keya also explained how the topic of the blog piece links with her current research: “In my doctoral research I interrogate the pursuit of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in the SDGs to unpack the ways in which young people – particularly young women and girls – are burdened with the responsibility to be ‘agents of change’ in delivering this normative idea of ‘feminism’, which will ultimately differ from their heterogenous needs and aspirations."
