Solidarity Beyond Borders: The Paradox of Transnational Feminism

Introduction Feminism today is borderless. A hashtag can travel faster than a manifesto; a story of resistance in Seoul can spark marches in São Paulo within hours. Yet solidarity, while invoked constantly, is never simple. What unites a garment worker in South Korea with a climate activist in Germany? Or a student organizer in Vietnam with a survivor of domestic violence in France? The promise of transnational feminism is the idea that women’s struggles are interconnected; its paradox lies in the fact that these struggles are also radically different.

This essay examines the paradox of transnational feminism: the tension between universal claims of women’s rights and the situated realities of local activism. Drawing on dialogues with activists across Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Africa, I argue that genuine solidarity is not about consensus or sameness. It is about reciprocity, discomfort, and the willingness to carry multiple truths at once.

The Universalist Temptation

For decades, global feminism has been framed through the language of universality. Documents like the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action declared women’s rights as human rights — a milestone in feminist advocacy. Yet the universalist claim carries hidden dangers: it risks flattening difference, prescribing what “women’s issues” ought to be, and exporting Western priorities as global agendas.

Consider how debates on reproductive rights are framed. In Europe or North America, the focus is on abortion access; in parts of Africa, maternal mortality is far more pressing; in Vietnam, issues of contraception intersect with legacies of war and state population control. To speak of “reproductive rights” as a single issue is to miss the heterogeneity of what reproduction means across contexts.

Universalism simplifies for the sake of advocacy. But simplification often erases.

The Fragmented Realities of Struggle

In our collective’s comparative study, we encountered striking divergences:

• Vietnam: Feminist activism is shaped by post-socialist state structures; advocacy often works through negotiation rather than confrontation.

• South Korea: Movements focus on digital feminism and resisting pervasive gendered surveillance, responding to the reality of hidden-camera crimes.

• Latin America: “Ni Una Menos” links gender violence with economic precarity and state corruption, giving feminism a mass, populist character.

• France & Germany: Debates revolve around intersectionality and the inclusion of migrant voices within established feminist spaces.

• South Africa: Struggles against gender violence are inseparable from the broader fight against racial and economic inequality.
  

These examples demonstrate that feminism is not one movement but a constellation. To imagine “solidarity” as merging these struggles into a single agenda is not only impossible but unjust.

The NGO-ization of Solidarity One recurring challenge is the NGO-ization of transnational feminism. International organizations often set funding priorities — gender mainstreaming, leadership training, anti-trafficking — that shape local agendas. While well-intentioned, this structure risks creating solidarity from above, where local movements adapt their language to donor expectations.

For instance, activists in Vietnam may frame their work in terms of “empowerment” or “capacity-building” — buzzwords legible to international NGOs but alien to local realities. The danger is that solidarity becomes transactional, tied to resource flows, rather than transformative.

True solidarity cannot be purchased or project-managed. It must emerge horizontally, through dialogue and mutual accountability.

The Ethics of Discomfort

So what does authentic solidarity look like? Perhaps the first step is to abandon the fantasy of easy unity. Solidarity is not about smoothing over differences but about staying with them.

In one of our panel discussions, a South African activist clashed with a European NGO representative over the role of religion. For the European, religion was seen as patriarchal; for the South African, faith communities were indispensable allies in ending gender violence. The exchange was tense, unresolved — yet it was also fertile. Discomfort forced both sides to articulate assumptions, to confront blind spots, to resist the urge to universalize.

Solidarity, in this sense, is less a warm embrace and more a rigorous practice of listening across unease.

Reciprocity Over Rescue

Another danger in transnational feminism is the “rescue narrative”: the idea that Western feminists save women elsewhere. This trope, famously critiqued by Gayatri Spivak in “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, persists in subtle ways. Campaigns against veiling in Europe, for example, often claim to liberate Muslim women, while ignoring their voices and agency.

Authentic solidarity must reject rescue in favor of reciprocity. The question is not “How can we help them?” but “What can we learn from each other?” A German climate activist may learn from a Bolivian feminist that environmental defense is inseparable from gender justice. A Vietnamese student organizer may teach a French activist that negotiation with state institutions can be as radical as protest. Reciprocity makes solidarity a two-way street.

The Multiplicity of Truths

To practice transnational feminism is to embrace multiplicity. It means acknowledging that feminism in Seoul, Johannesburg, or Lima may not look like feminism in Boston — and that this is not a weakness but a strength.

Multiplicity allows for coalitions without assimilation. It makes space for both common ground and contradiction. It resists the neoliberal desire to brand feminism into a unified campaign, and instead honors the messiness of real struggles.

Conclusion: Toward a Chorus, Not a Slogan

The paradox of transnational feminism is that it both demands and resists solidarity. It demands solidarity because patriarchal structures — from neoliberal capitalism to climate collapse — are transnational. But it resists solidarity because women’s lives are lived locally, in contexts shaped by culture, history, and politics.

The challenge, then, is not to solve this paradox but to live within it. To build solidarity that is not about consensus, but about coexistence. To value not just the moments when voices align, but the moments when they clash and expand each other.

In the end, transnational feminism should aspire less to a single slogan and more to a chorus. A chorus is not unison; it is harmony through difference. And it is precisely this dissonant harmony that makes feminist solidarity both possible and powerful.