Marina Ristic
4.21.2007.
CPC.041
Prof Blackman
GLOBAL WOMAN
In their book “Global Woman” Ehrenreich and Hochschild described consequences
of globalization on the lives of millions of women as they leave the poverty of Third
World countries to seek employment in domestic services for affluent women in First
World countries.
According to the authors, in the post-Communist world, career-oriented,uppermiddle-class women of wealthy nations and striving, adventurous women from
crumbling poverty come together as mistress and maid. Focusing on more than the
traditional movement of labor on the basis of supply and demand, the articles in this
anthology explore the ramifications of this transfer of caring skills as it affects the culture
in both poor and wealthy countries. Also considered is the enormous rise in the sex trade.
The current discourse on globalization, has little to say about the "migration of maids,
nannies, nurses, sex workers, and contract brides," since, to most economists, these
women "are just individuals making a go of it." The positive effects of their labor are
sometimes noted: the money they remit to home countries is a major source of foreign
exchange, and the work they do in the host country enables a large pool of upwardly
mobile First World women to pursue productive careers. The negative consequences,
which can include emotional hardships caused by leaving children behind as well as
physical strains, are rarely acknowledged. Authors pointed out that in previous centuries
the developed world imported natural resources, and now they import women who can
care for the elderly and disabled, lovingly raise children and provide sexual services for
men. The editors have gathered some 15 essays on aspects of "the female underside of
globalization"-for example Filipina housekeepers in Hong Kong, Latina –domestic
workers in Los Angeles, sexual slaves in Thailand, Vietnamese contract brides etc.Where
do the women come from who willingly fill in for other women in homes not their own,
and why? The general domestic worker migration pattern globally is from the poorer
nations to large cities in the developed Northern Hemisphere. In many cases, those
traveling, whether thousands of miles or merely across country borders, need to cross a
language barrier, as well. Many of these women cannot make ends meet at home for
themselves and their families, so they travel abroad to work, reluctantly leaving their
children, husband, and culture, specifically for the purpose of making money and sending
it back home. With greater numbers of domestic workers than ever before in human
history migrating long distances, legal residence records must be kept accurate so that
hidden abuse cannot occur. The largest group of visa holders by far, the B-1, are
prohibited legally from transferring from one employer to another, but the State
Department does not keep records of the location of B-1 visa holders. Therefore, it is
practically impossible to locate a worker at risk of exploitation or enslavement,including
unwanted sexual relations, especially when the worker cannot speak the developed
country’s dominant language and is afraid to leave the employer. Compounded with
suffering in silence for fear of loss of legal status and subsequent deportation are the
daily suffering of employers’ violation of promised rules. These violations include
extending the worker’s day to 16 hours, wages lower than minimum wage, violence, and
confiscation of passports .In these ways, hope of a better quality of life, equality, and
trust in human relations in the developed country is destroyed, creating a negative
emotional deficit, rather than a reward, for the domestic worker, who has brought
‘caring,’ a positive emotional quality, as part of her package. More deeply disturbing is
the case of sex workers worldwide, who have even less human rights built into their
contracts. One example given in depth by Bales is what occurs with conditions in
Thailand. Geography has defined land use, and culture, for the hill tribes of the
mountains in north. Historically, those without good land were forced to view their
children as commodities in bad times, such as when a harvest failed. The custom was to
sell a girl, never a boy. Since 1977, government policies have created an unprecedented
lag in the economy of the mountainous north relative to the industrialization of the rest of
the country. The price of consumer goods is met by an old source, where “one girl equals
one television.” Recent research in Bales’ study shows village girls’ naïve attitudes about
what prostitution entails. A girl is lured into prostitution without really knowing what it
is. The girl thinks she is helping her family’s living conditions when a brothel’s agent
draws up a contract with her parents, and that by example of the slightly older, young
woman visiting her home, she will be wearing nice clothes and have money as well.
A lesson to be learned from reading this book is that people in the developed
world should be grateful for assistance from domestic workers from poorer countries. To
physically or even verbally abuse these women is indeed a transgression of what should
be any individual’s universal human rights, especially to people who are educated to
understand the concept of human rights, together with freedom.
When women are abused, physically or sexually, it not only devastates
individual lives, but it also has a huge negative impact on communities, families and
children. Therefore, the United Nations Development Fund for Women or
UNIFEM, has made fighting violence against women a major focus of its work. Its
programs include awareness rising, supporting the formulations and
implementation of new laws to strengthen women’s human rights, and increasing
women’s access to justice. The need for these programs is clear: at least one of every
three women worldwide has been abused in her lifetime; and one in five women will
be a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. These statistics do not even
touch on horrid practices such as female genital mutilation and honor killings, or
the number of women who are trafficked across borders into lives as forced laborers
and sex slaves, or those are abused because they contracted HIV/AIDS.