How is Globalization Altering Women’s Lives?

           During the 1980s, women were beginning to migrate to urban areas or near export-oriented factories from their rural homes to work in foreign companies looking for low taxes, cheap labor, and few environmental guidelines. Women undergo pressure within gender expectations and to take on wage labor in order to provide for their families. Women experience challenges in the labor force in areas such as Malaysia, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Barbados. A study online tries to uncover why Malaysian women don’t rise above their organizations to stand up for their amount of contribution to the company and their individual self-worth. They embody close to 50% of the workforce, but are under-represented. Men move to senior management positions more than women do.

            Anthropologist Aihwa Ong studied Malaysian women being supervised by management under increasingly invasive surveillance to regulate a rise in production efficiency. Some women workers would encounter a spirit possession on the factory floor, becoming violent and yelling at managers. They protested against independence and loss of humanity. Helen Safa research showed that the result of factory work varied pertaining to women’s ethnicity, class, and culture, but male dominance exists in the workplace as well as at home with their husbands. On the other hand, Carla Freeman discovered women in Barbados enjoy working in the informatics industry. Their working conditions are comfortable and enjoy company transportation, job security, and flexible work hours.

            Globalization encourages the movement of women to look for jobs so they can support themselves and their children. Tens of millions of women a year move to urban cities and export-processing factories in their own country. Some support their families in developing countries by working abroad. Still, some women become nannies, maids, and cleaning ladies. If it wasn’t for “care work” in wealthy countries, women in developed countries wouldn’t be able to work themselves. This absence, in turn, creates a distance between their own families. A website provided many links to explore the positive and negative ways to look at globalization affecting women’s lives. The website states that globalization helps groups of women mobilize, but can cause favoritism towards male workers. 

http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ach/article/viewFile/364/304

http://sociology.emory.edu/faculty/globalization/issues02.html