Review of the Book Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers The book that I chose to do a review on is called “Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy” written by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild. As the title of this book suggests, it talks about the struggles of women as domestic workers and how the migration of women to find work affects the economy and their families on both a global and personal scale. This book contains mini-chapters of personal stories of the struggles and hardships that these women went through in order to attain a job, survive and feed their families (Segrave 2010). Some of the common themes and concepts that all the chapters in this book touch upon that is also related …show more content…
Many women like Rowena often have to leave behind their children and work as nannies in foreign countries by taking care of other people’s children due to the inability to attain a job back in their home country (Wrigley 2005). The gap between the rich and the poor has been widening more than ever and we can see that happening since 1960. In 1960, the north was twenty times wealthier than the south (Ehrenreich and Hochschild 17). However in 1980, that gap widened and the north became forty-six times richer (Ehrenreich and Hochschild …show more content…
Places such as Hong Kong and Singapore have countless of women from the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Korea and Sri Lanka filling in for domestic servants (Ehrenreich and Hochschild 19). Many of these women usually have the necessary education and skills to be a teacher, a nurse or administrative workers, however due to the inability to find jobs or inability to make ends meet with their jobs back in their home country, many of them travel to other countries where they are able to earn a higher wage working in the domestic labor (Ehrenreich and Hochschild 18). Unfortunately for many women that go abroad to developed countries, they are unable to rely on anyone else to help them make ends meet. Deskilling of labor is a form of result from globalization because it causes many women to have to migrate to different countries and work in occupations that they over qualified for (Ehrenreich and Hochschild 20). Even till now, the domestic labor is still generally women which makes this occupation very gendered