Borders, boundaries, and brokers: The unintended consequences of strategic essentialism in transnational feminist networks

Strategic essentialising around the figure of the Congolese woman has created a collective of more than 60 different women’s organisations coming from opposite corners of the DRC. There now exists an extensive grassroots community, which maintains visibility and close contact with international organisations, donors, and NGOs in the country, as well as successfully advocating for gender equality. In this chapter, I examine how transnational women’s movements in post-conflict countries hide intersectionality and privilege amongst their members as a way to produce the figure of the ‘real local woman’ and build bridges between the international and the native, and to gain space in the overcrowded development and peacebuilding market. Ignoring differences amongst women and how ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality are historically constituted might compromise the very same emancipatory potential that transnational networks could offer.