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

Ehrenreich, Barbara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1862075883 ISBN 13: 9781862075887

Publisher: Granta Books, 2003

Synopsis

This anthology examines the unexplored consequences of globalization on the lives of women worldwide. In a world shaped by mass migration and economic exchange on an ever-increasing scale, women are moving around the globe as never before. Every year, millions leave Mexico, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Eastern Europe to work in the homes, nurseries and brothels of the First World - from Vietnamese mail-order brides to Mexican nannies in LA, from Thai girls in Vietnamese brothels to Czech au pairs in the UK. In the new global calculus, the female energy that flows to wealthy countries to ease a 'care deficit' is subtracted from poor ones, often to the detriment of the families left behind. Is the main resource now extracted from the Third World 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

'A volume of deep insight and impeccable scholarship' -- Patricia Fernández-Kelly

This...reaches right to the dark heart of society’s worst dysfunctions, with stories to make you weep with outrage’ -- Polly Toynbee, Guardian, Book of the Week

We should be grateful for this uncomfortable book which holds up a true mirror to the underbelly of globalisation’ -- Melissa Benn, The Independent Magazine

‘This is a subject much more subtle than brothel life; it’s all our lives’ -- Michael Pye The Scotsman

About this edition

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1862075883
• ISBN 13: 9781862075887
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288