Other Negative Points Raised

• feminism is relevant to highly educated women

• the word “feminism” is not known

• feminism is not relevant to rural women

Some remarks were indirectly negative about feminism: e.g.

• Women were all feminists in the Pacific anyway, because they were looking for the betterment of women and women's lives, and were working for the liberation of their people. There were different definitions of feminism.

• Someone thought if women went around identifying themselves as working for women, then when something went wrong, men would be quick to point a page 20 finger and blame women for not using the assistance properly.

• Someone said that she was for “anything pro-women”, but she did not necessarily need to call herself a feminist.

• Another participant said that the word “feminist” scared her; she was not a feminist. She asked: What is it? What is its meaning?, even though, from her works, people called her a feminist.

• Someone said that she understood it as Western feminism, but if she had a wider understanding of the word, she would have a greater identification with it. (This remark was bordering on the positive!)

• It was commonly said that feminism was a new word for some countries and women would be afraid to introduce it to the women they were working with. There would be some difficulty in introducing feminism.