Summary Of Global Wom Nannies, Maids, And Sex Workers In The New Economy

In the essay collection Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, And Sex Workers in the New Economy, Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild issue a response to the changing gender roles of women in an increasingly globalized world. This quote, part of the Introduction to the essay compilation published in 2004, takes a transnational approach to feminism:

“Why the transfer of women’s traditional services from poor to rich parts of the world? The reasons are (…) easy to guess. Women in Western countries have increasingly taken on paid work and hence need other- paid domestics and caretakers for children and elderly people- to replace them. For their part, women in poor countries have an obvious incentive to migrate: relate and absolute poverty.

Countries in the Global North continue to receive benefits of a globalized economy, with increased international trade and investments. The difference in economic wealth between countries is so great that “by 1980, the gap had more than doubled, and the north was forty-six times richer than the south” (Hochschild, 2004, 17). The difference in the value of the dollar is shown through the widespread ability of foreign Western men to be able to afford prostitutes when traveling to the Global South. Although women in the Global South earn high amounts of money compared to others in their country from sex work, the amount they earn is extremely low in the global economy. Both sex and care work offers women financial independence and allows them to take advantage of the wealth gap, by working in financially richer countries. Rowena Bauista, a woman from the Philippines exemplifies how “poverty pushes” women to migrate to the Global North. Taking on domestic work in the United States of America, allows her to have enough money to take care of her family back home (Hochschild, 2004, 17). Not only does poverty at home make look going abroad attractive, but the economic gap between countries makes their work have higher economic value abroad than work at home. Although many women are driven by these factors, there

A global care chain forms in which Northern women hire Southern women for domestic tasks, and then the Southern women must depend on family members to take her care of her own children. While children in the Global North have their biological parents and a paid domestic worker caring for them, children in the Global South do not always even have the full-time care of one adult. In this globalized world, not only is there an economic gap, but a gap in the amount of love children are able to receive from adults. Josephine Perera, a migrant worker from Sri Lanka, had the choice to either move abroad and provide for her family or stay with them and suffer economically. After deciding to work abroad, two of her children began having emotional problems (Hochschild & Ehrenreich, 2004, p.2). Josephine and women throughout the Global South are forced to make difficult decisions as they are not able to economically provide for their children and be the ones to provide for them emotionally. The Southern children are at the bottom of the global care chain, as their upbringings are often neglected. As in the Global North, men have not increased dramatically the amount of care and housework they do. But unlike the Global North, these children are not being raised full-time by paid help. This care deficit in the Global South could