I was in class the other day and a student was presenting her project. Her topic was about women’s organizations who fight for women’s rights in places like the Middle East and Africa. She argued that feminist organizations who hail from the U.S. or Western Europe and come to work at a country such as South Africa, where girls don’t finish school because they don’t have access to pads or tampons, have good intentions, but they should be more careful and aware of the social and political context of the country in which they work when advising foreign governments on their policies toward women.

I agree. And I think the tone many Western feminists use needs to change. I often cringe when I hear men and women who call themselves feminists say, “Muslim women need to be liberated,” or, “Oh, those poor women in Nigeria.” These comments have a similar tone to that of past British colonialism in Africa and Asia, and Christians justified the invasions by saying that the Brown and Black peoples need to be “saved” from their savage ways and put on the right path toward God.

These justifications white people have used in the past are echoed in the proclamations that South Asian women need to be saved or that the hijab (a headscarf worn by many Muslim women) shouldn’t be accepted by the West because it’s an affront to freedom, which the West values (ironically rejecting an individual woman’s freedom to wear what she wants in a society that claims to be based on personal liberty).

Now, I recognize that there are many countries that have more policies that restrict women politically, socially and economically; however, painting an entire female population as oppressed in one country is a generalization and misconception.

And it’s ironic.

In the U.S alone, only 20 percent of women are lawmakers. There is still a wage gap and a lack of paid maternity leave, which inhibits women’s career opportunities. Sexism, sexual harassment, and rape culture are rampant in both corporate and college cultures alike, and yet, many Americans bemoan the poor fate of the Middle Eastern, African, or South Asian woman overseas...acting as if women in the U.S. or parts of Europe live a life where they are completely treated and viewed as equal to any man.

And when feminist groups that are publicly against religion tell theocratic governments how to dictate their policies toward women (FEMEN comes to mind here), their endeavors become counterintuitive. Theocratic regimes and dictatorships are even less likely to hear the cause of women’s rights organizations if they feel that foreign groups are dictating policy.

I am not saying Western feminists should cease their fight for women’s rights around the globe. However, they should play a more supporting role for the African, Asian and Middle Eastern feminists making small strides appropriate to the religious and cultural world they live in. These women don’t need to be “saved.” They are the ones who record themselves driving in Saudi Arabia, they are the ones who fought to fully represent women in parliament in Libya, they are the ones who educate their girls in hopes of a better future, and a better world.