Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080506995X ISBN 13: 9780805069952

Publisher: Metropolitan Books, 2003

Synopsis

In a remarkable pairing, two renowned social critics offer a groundbreaking anthology that examines the unexplored consequences of globalization on the lives of women worldwide Women are moving around the globe as never before. But for every female executive racking up frequent flier miles, there are multitudes of women whose journeys go unnoticed. Each year, millions leave Mexico, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and other third world countries to work in the homes, nurseries, and brothels of the first world. This broad-scale transfer of labor associated with women's traditional roles results in an odd displacement. In the new global calculus, the female energy that flows to wealthy countries is subtracted from poor ones, often to the detriment of the families left behind. The migrant nanny--or cleaning woman, nursing care attendant, maid--eases a "care deficit" in rich countries, while her absence creates a "care deficit" back home. Confronting a range of topics, from the fate of Vietnamese mail-order brides to the importation of Mexican nannies in Los Angeles and the selling of Thai girls to Japanese brothels, "Global Woman" offers an unprecedented look at a world shaped by mass migration and economic exchange on an ever-increasing scale. In fifteen vivid essays-- of which only four have been previously published-- by a diverse and distinguished group of writers, collected and introduced by bestselling authors Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, this important anthology reveals a new era in which the main resource extracted from the third world is no longer gold or silver, but love.

About this title

Review:

The single most important and astonishing statistic in Global Woman is that half the world's 120 million legal and illegal migrants are now believed to be women. Globalisation has its female underside and it involves a process whereby women in rich countries, often those who have succeeded in a tough "male world", find career success only by turning over the care of their children, elderly parents and homes to women from the developing world. The flipside of this is that millions of poor women leave their own children and families and migrate north to serve as nannies, maids and sometimes sex workers. In short there has been a global transfer of the services associated with a wife's traditional role--child care, homemaking and sex--from poor countries to rich ones. The authors think of this transfer in terms of a "care deficit"

The 15 detailed and well-researched essays collected here range from personal recollections to broad economic analysis spanning the globe from Taiwan to Mexico and from Thailand to the Dominican Republic. They cover such topics as the transfer of emotional resources, the pressures global capitalism puts on women and their families and the ways that women's migration has modified relationships between men and women--both through marriage and through the global sex trade. Most importantly, the contributors have brought the personal stories of those the authors call "the world's most invisible women" into the light. This is essential and disturbing reading for all those interested in the effects of global capitalism, along with Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed--Undercover in Low-wage America. --Larry Brown

Review:

"Full of vivid and devastating portraits, this collection also illuminates the larger forces driving the transnational traffic in child and elder care, housecleaning, and sex services...Global Woman will change the way we think about globalization and about women's caring labor."

About this edition

• Publisher: Metropolitan Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 080506995X
• ISBN 13: 9780805069952
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Ehrenreich Barbara, Hochschild Arlie Russell