Jayawardena, Kumari

Kumari Jayawardena (Sinhala: කුමාරි ජයවර්ධන; born 1931) is a Sri Lankan feminist activist and academic. Her work is part of the canon of Third-world feminism which conceptualizes feminist philosophies as indigenous and unique to non-Western societies and nations rather than offshoots of Western feminism. She has taught at the University of Colombo and the International Institute of Social Studies. In the 1980s Jayawardena published Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World, which has become a classic work on non-Western women's movements. She has published other books including The White Woman's Other Burden and written many articles. She founded the Social Scientists' Association in the 1970s and plays an active role in Sri Lankan civil rights movements.