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

Barbara Ehrenreich

Macmillan, 2004 - Political Science - 328 pages

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 best selling authors Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, this anthology reveals a new era in which the main resource extracted from the third world is no longer gold or silver, but love.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Janine2011 - LibraryThing

This book takes on a subject most of us choose to ignore. The invisible work of nannies, domestics and sex workers... most of whom travel around the world for low paying, no benefit jobs. Most are ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Meggo - LibraryThing

An interesting book based on a series of scholarly essays about women's conditions in the global economy - largely as international domestic help, but also as nannies and sex workers. The length of ...

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• Love and Gold: 15
• The Nanny Dilemma: 31
• Children and Transnational Families in the New Global Economy: 39
• Blowups and Other Unhappy Endings: 55
• Caring for the Independent Person: 70
• Maid to Order: 85
• Just Another Job? The Commodification of Domestic Labor: 104
• Household Rules and Relations: 115
• Migrant Maids and ModernDay Slavery: 142
• Sex Tourism as a Steppingstone to International Migration: 154
• Migrant Domestics and Their Taiwanese Employers Across Generations: 169
• Breadwinner No More: 190
• Because She Looks like a Child: 207
• Highly Educated Overseas Brides and LowWage US Husbands: 230
• Global Cities and Survival Circuits: 254
• Maps and Chart: 275
• Activist Organizations: 281
• Notes: 285
• Bibliography: 317
• Acknowledgments: 325
• The Contributors: 326

About the author

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941-2022) was a bestselling author and political activist, whose more than a dozen books included Nickel and Dimed, which the New York Times described as "a classic in social justice literature", Bait and Switch, Bright-sided, This Land Is Their Land, Dancing In The Streets, and Blood Rites. An award-winning journalist, she frequently contributed to Harper's, The Nation, The New York Times, and TIME magazine. Ehrenreich was born in Butte, Montana, when it was still a bustling mining town. She studied physics at Reed College, and earned a Ph.D. in cell biology from Rockefeller University. Rather than going into laboratory work, she got involved in activism, and soon devoted herself to writing her innovative journalism.

Arlie Russell Hochschild is the author of The Time Bind, The Second Shift, and The Managed Heart. She is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, Her articles have appeared in Harper's, Mother Jones, and Psychology Today, among others. She lives in San Francisco.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy; Holt paperbacks
• Author: Barbara Ehrenreich
• Editors: Barbara Ehrenreich, Arlie Russell Hochschild
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Macmillan, 2004
• ISBN: 0805075097, 9780805075090
• Length: 328 pages
• Subjects: Political Science / Globalization; Political Science / Labor & Industrial Relations; Social Science / Social Classes & Economic Disparity; Social Science / Women's Studies