A/HRC/4/34 page 17 vision of culture as a homogenous and bounded entity with an excessive aggregation around a unified identity. Moreover, this vision conveniently overlooks the relations between culture, oppression and power structures, which privileges one interpretation of culture over another. In the neoliberal era, identity politics, based on cultural differences, has made culture the site of contestation and the notion of culture a tool of new forms of oppression,25 whether in its orientalist or occidentalist guise. 44. Women have found themselves entangled in these ideological contests and have often been left with the “choice” of joining forces with imperialist/hegemonic projects or compliance with oppressive practices. This dilemma is all too evident in the colonial experience, where colonial powers in Africa and India, for instance, often selectively addressed some women’s concerns to legitimize their “civilizing” mission, enlisting the discourse of the Western women’s movement of that time to promote their colonial agenda. In India, colonizers introduced their own ideals of Victorian femininity, aspects of which had much in common with the local prototype in their dependence on male validation and their primacy of a self-effacing maternal role, while selectively targeting practices such as child marriage and “sati” (the immolation of widows at the funeral of their husband). Social legislation aimed at improving the life conditions of women, which included raising the age of marriage and introducing education, became emblematic of imperial achievement. These linkages between colonial oppression and women’s rights campaigns at the time have been instrumentalized to undermine local women’s rights advocacy today, whereas the contribution of women’s movements in the decolonialization struggle have been largely forgotten.26 45. The colonial experience was no doubt not uniform. Some colonial projects, such as the efforts to abolish foot-binding in China (1874-1911) or the initiatives to abolish bride wealth in Uganda in the 1950s, paralleled campaigns by local women activists. In other instances, as in Kenya in 1920-1931 and later in the 1950s, colonial efforts to abolish female circumcision strengthened the nationalist cause and gave new salience to the practice, which came to symbolize nationalist opposition to colonialism.27 25 S. Mojab, “The Politics of Theorizing ‘Islamic Feminism’: Implications for International Feminist Movements”, Women Living Under Muslim Laws. Dossier (2001), pp. 23-24. 26 See: Report of the Asia Pacific NGO Consultation, Negotiating Culture: Intersections of Culture and Violence against Women in Asia Pacific, APWLD, 2006. 27 A. Tripp, “The Evolution of Transnational Feminisms”. In Global Feminism, M. Ferree and A. Tripp (eds.), (New York University Press, 2006), pp. 51-75.