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.

2
Globalization has transformed work/family life
for women in rich poor countries

• 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

3
female underside of globalization

• Millions of women from poor countries in the
  south migrate to do the womens 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

4
Pattern of female migration reflects a worldwide
gender revolution

• 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?

5
Hypothesis The lifestyles of the First World
are made possible by a global transfer of the
services associated with a wifes traditional
rolechild care, homemaking, and sexfrom poor
countries to rich ones
6
To generalize and oversimplify

• 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

7
Precedents for the globalization of traditional
female services

• 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

8
feminization of migration

• 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
• Now, half of worlds 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)

9
US household workforce has changed w/ life
chances of different ethnic groups

• 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
  Womens Work Harper's, 4/1/2000)

10
Govts of some sending countries actively
encourage women to migrate

• Migrant women are more likely than male
  counterparts to send hard-earned wages back home
  to families
• Generally, they send anywhere from half to nearly
  all of what they earn
• Remittances have critical impact on lives of
  families and kin, as well as on cash-strapped
  Third World govts

11
Care deficit pulls migrants from Third World
and postcommunist countries poverty pushes them

• Throughout western Europe, Taiwan, Japan, and
  esp. in US, womens 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
• 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

12
Globalization of womens work is NOT a simple
synergy of needs among women

• Fails to account for failure of First World
  governments to meet the needs created by womens
  entry into workforce
• The American andto a lesser degreeEuropean
  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

13
Push factors not so simple either

• 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
• 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
• Other factors may make men of poor countries less
  desirable as husbands (e.g., unemployment and
  related social problems such as alcoholism and
  gambling)

14
Globalization of child care housework brings
independent women of world together but not as
sisters allies with common goals

• Instead they come together across a great divide
  of privilege and opportunity

15
Global relationship of women mirrors traditional
relationship b/w sexes

• 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