FINLAND & PALESTINE Proceedings of a Joint Workshop

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colonial societies. They challenge the assumption that gender
oppression is the primary force of patriarchy. Postcolonial
feminists object to portrayals of women of non-Western societies
as passive and voiceless victims, and the portrayal of
Western women as modern, educated and empowered.
There are anti-pornography, sex-positive, radical, liberal, multiracial,
social, Marxist, libertarian, post-structural and postmodern
feminist movements. In addition, there are Christian
feminist movements which base their ideology on the Christian
faith, but, at the same time, criticize the gender policies of the
church. Every one of these has its own place in the sociopolitical
discourse in Finland.
As we have seen, women are an extremely heterogeneous entity
- to the point that the precious ambitions and goals of
some women's groups might be the nightmare of some other
groups. In a process of building a viable and equitable state or
society, the most crucial concern is to allow free debate between
different interest groups. There is no one voice that
could represent all women in Palestine, or in Finland. No one
group should ever have the right to represent all women in the
society, on the other hand, the voice of no women's group
should ever be silenced. This is one thing that unites women all
around the world.
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