56 Power, Representation and feminist Critique they imply and suggest. I argue that as a result of the two modes-or rather, frames-of analysis described above, a homogeneous notion of the oppression of women as a group is assumed, which, in turn, produces the image of an"average third world woman. This average third world woman leads an essentially truncated life based on her feminine gender (read: sexually constrained )and her being third world"(read: ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, domestic, family-oriented, victimized, etc. ) This, I suggest, is in contrast to the(implicit)self-representation of Western women as educated as modern, as having control over their own bodies and sexualities, and the freedom to make their own decisions The distinction between Western feminist re-presentation of women in the third world and Western feminist self-presentation is a distinction of the same order as that made by some Marxists between the main- tenance"function of the housewife and the real"productive"role of wage labor, or the characterization by developmentalists of the third world as being engaged in the lesser production of"raw materials"in contrast to the real"productive activity of the first world. These distinctions are made on the basis of the privileging of a particular group as the norm or referent. Men involved in wage labor, first world producers, and, I suggest, Western feminists who sometimes cast third world women in terms of ourselves undressed"(Michelle Rosaldo's [1980 term),all construct themselves as the normative referent in such a binary analyti Womenas Category of Analysis, or: We are All Sisters in Struggle By women as a category of analysis, I am referring to the crucial assumption that all of us of the same gender, across classes and cultures, are somehow socially constituted as a homogeneous group identified prior to the process of analysis. This is an assumption which characterizes much feminist discourse. The homogeneity of women as a group is produced not on the basis of biological essentials but rather on the basis of secondary sociological and anthropological universals. Thus, for instance, in any given piece of feminist analysis, women are characterized as a singular group on the basis of a shared oppression. What binds women together is a sociological notion of the"sameness"of their oppression. It is at this point that an elision takes place between women"as a discursively constructed group and"women"as material subjects of their own history. 6 Thus, the discursively consensual homogeneity of"women"as a group is mistaken for the historically specific material reality of groups of women. This results in an assumption of women as an always already constituted group, one which has been labeled"powerless, ""exploited, sexually harassed, "etc. by feminist scientific, economic, legal, and so ciological discourses. (Notice that this is quite similar to sexist discourse