Transcript Slide 1

“Nannies, Maids, and Sex
Workers in the New
Economy”
Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell
Hochschild, in Rothenberg, Ed., Beyond
Borders: Thinking Critically About
Global Issues, 2006.
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Globalization has transformed work/family
life for women in rich & poor countries
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Women from poor countries are moving to
rich ones, to work as nannies, maids & sex
workers
Many women in rich countries are
succeeding in “male world” careers only
by turning over care of children, elderly
parents, and homes to women from the
Third World
• These women typically lack help from male
partners
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The female underside of
globalization
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Millions of women from poor
countries in the south migrate to do
the “women’s work” of the north –
work that affluent women are no
longer able or willing to do
Migrant women often leave their own
children back home, in the care of
grandmothers, sisters, sisters-in-law
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Pattern of female migration reflects a
“worldwide gender revolution”
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In both rich & poor countries, fewer
families can rely solely on a male
breadwinner
In the U.S., the earning power of most
men has declined since 1970, and many
women have gone to work to make up the
difference
• So who will take care of the children, the sick, the
elderly?
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Hypothesis:
The lifestyles of the First World are
made possible by a global transfer
of the services associated with a
wife’s traditional role—child care,
homemaking, and sex—from poor
countries to rich ones
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To generalize and oversimplify:
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In an earlier phase of imperialism,
northern countries extracted natural
resources and agricultural products from
lands they colonized
Today, while still relying on Third World
countries for agricultural and industrial
labor, the wealthy countries also seek to
extract something harder to measure and
quantify, that can look very much like
love.
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Precedents for the globalization of
traditional female services
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In ancient Middle East, women of vanquished
populations were routinely enslaved, to serve
as household workers and concubines for
victors
Among the Africans brought to N America as
slaves in the 16th – 19th centuries, 1/3 were
women & children, and many became
concubines and domestic servants
19th century Irishwomen and rural
Englishwomen migrated to English towns &
cities to work as domestics in homes of
growing upper-middle class
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The feminization of migration
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1950 – 1970, men predominated in labor
migration to northern Europe from Turkey,
Greece, and North Africa
• Since then, women have been replacing men
• In 1946, women were fewer than 3% of the Algerians
and Moroccans living in France; by 1990, they were
more than 40%
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Now, half of world’s 120 million legal &
illegal migrants are believed to be women
Women migrants from many sending
countries actually outnumber men,
sometimes by a wide margin (See pp. 533-534)
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US household workforce has changed w/ life
chances of different ethnic groups
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In late 19th century, Irish and German immigrants served
the northern upper & middle classes, then left for factories
as soon as they could
Black women replaced them, accounting for 60% of all
domestics in the late 1940s, and dominated the field until
other occupations opened up
West coast maids were disproportionately Japanese
American until that group found better options
Today, ethnicity of workforce varies by region: Chicanas in
the Southwest, Caribbeans in New York, native Hawaiians in
Hawaii, whites, mostly rural, in Maine
(Ehreneich, “Maid to Order: The Politics of Other Women’s Work” Harper's, 4/1/2000)
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Govt’s of some sending countries
actively encourage women to migrate

Migrant women are more likely than
male counterparts to send hardearned wages back home to families
• Generally, they send anywhere from half
to nearly all of what they earn
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These remittances have significant
impact on lives of families and kin,
as well as on cash-strapped Third
World gov’ts
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“Care deficit” pulls migrants from Third
World and postcommunist countries;
poverty pushes them
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Throughout western Europe, Taiwan, Japan, and
esp. in US, women’s employment has increased
dramatically since the 1970s
As rich countries have grown richer, poor
countries have become poorer – in absolute &
relative terms
• Global inequalities in wages are particularly striking
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To qualify for loans, IMF/WB structural
adjustment programs demand poor countries
devalue their currencies and cut public spending
• Increasing incentives for migration to more fortunate
parts of the world
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Globalization of women’s work is NOT a
simple synergy of needs among women
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Fails to account for failure of First World
governments to meet the needs created
by women’s entry into workforce
• The American and—to a lesser degree—
European welfare state has become a
“deadbeat dad”
• US does not offer public child care, nor insure
paid family and medical leave

Omits the role of men, who still do less
than their “fair share” of domestic work
• Often leaving working women with a “second
shift”
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“Push” factors not so simple either
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Absolute poverty not a push factor
• Female migrants not the most impoverished
• They are typically more affluent and better educated than
male migrants
• Such women are likely to be enterprising and adventurous
enough to resist the social pressures to stay home and accept
their lot in life
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Noneconomic factors also influential
• To escape expectation to care for elderly family
members, to give paychecks to husband or father, to
defer to an abusive husband
• A practical response to divorce or need to raise children
as single mother
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Other factors may make men of poor countries less
desirable as husbands (e.g., unemployment and related
social problems such as alcoholism and gambling)
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Globalization of child care & housework brings
independent women of world together –but
not as sisters & allies with common goals
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Instead they come together across a
great divide of privilege and opportunity
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Global relationship of women mirrors
traditional relationship b/w sexes
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The First World takes on a role like that of
the old-fashioned male in the family
Poor countries take on a role like that of
the traditional woman within the family
• A division of labor feminists critiqued
when it was “local” has now,
metaphorically speaking, gone global
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Concepts can also be arranged on a
continuum, from specific to universal
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universal concepts apply across
social settings, historical time, and
culture
specific concepts apply only to
particular social settings, historical
eras, or cultures
Many concepts fall between these
extremes
(Neumann, pp. 299-300)
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Concepts can be grouped in
various ways, for example:
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social structures
social processes
social relations
social actors
activities
events
social contexts/locations/populations
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