Women in Comparative Societies

Women on the Move in a Globalizing World

Based on Global Woman, edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russel Hochschild. “Introduction.”

Proposition: the upward mobility of 1^st World women depends on the geographic mobility of 3^rd World women

Millions of women migrate from poor countries to wealthier

countries to obtain work as domestic workers, nannies, or sex workers

Women in developed countries use the supplementary childcare provided

By migrant workers to obtain more affluent careers

Is this situation just?

Who benefits? Who pays and how?

What problems are created or exacerbated by women’s migration?

1. Many laborers have to leave their children in search for work

2. These jobs often make paltry comparative wages

3. Women seeking to migrate are vulnerable to criminal networks of smugglers/traffickers

who sell them to pimps for work in sex industry or

have little recourse for unfair or no pay, horrible living/working conditions, etc.

Why are these issues given little scholarly attention?

1. Many migrants are women of color which results in racial discounting

2. These jobs are primarily indoors and hidden

3. There is a stigma in western cultures against dependency on migrant labor

4. There is only sufficient statistical data on legal immigration (not illegal)

The first world way of life is made possible by the transfer of

Classic “wifely duties” to domestic servants

This is not the first historical precedent of shifting child-rearing

Duties to transplanted women

1. In the ancient Middle East, women of defeated populations were made into slaves

2. In the American slave trade of the 19th Century, one-third of slaves brought from Africa were women who became domestic servants

3. In the nineteenth century, Irish women migrated to English towns to serve wealthy households

What if is distinctive about today’s waves of migration?

Scale, magnitude, rapidity, “global-ness”

Why do women migrate today?

Economic Reasons

Push factors:

Many poor governments support the migration of women

Economic development impact: Women are estimated to send half of what they earn back home

Institutions like the World Bank and IMF require developing countries to restructure fiscal policies

These reforms often reduce public goods such as welfare and education (forcing women to seek a larger income)

Desire for upward mobility in home countries

Pull factors:

There is relatively more wealth to be found in developed countries (even non-western countries)

In Hong Kong the wages for a Filipina domestic are about 15 times the wages of a school teacher in the Philippines