Globalization and Technological Advancements

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How does gender relate to globalization?

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Gender is intricately linked to globalization, often leading to increased employment opportunities for women, particularly in developing nations. However, these jobs are frequently exploitative, offering low pay and poor conditions while reinforcing traditional gender roles. Globalization can blur gender issues by prioritizing economic gains, yet it also fosters global awareness of gender equality, enabling women worldwide to share experiences and advocate for rights. This dual effect highlights both challenges and progress in gender dynamics under globalization.

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Gender's intersection with globalization is an incredibly complex and difficult topic. In general, globalization tends to open up employment opportunities for women in developing nations; however, many of these opportunities tend to be exploitative with poor pay, extreme conditions, and long work hours. Many women have culturally-imposed domestic responsibilities, which cut into their time away from work. In fact, globalized corporations have even begun to exploit "female" domestic skills for their own advantage. In her book Threads on the garment industry, Jane Collins quotes US corporate managers who told her that they moved their factories abroad because many women in developing countries (the so-called "Global South") are already sewing experts due to the work that they do at home. In this way, globalization turns the traditional skills that women develop due to their disadvantaged societal status into a temporary employment advantage. In other words, these employers exploit the domestic skills...

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that women develop in the household (their superior sewing skills) to increase labor efficiency. Despite providing women an advantage in the labor market, the assumption of female domestic skill becomes a disadvantage in the workplace, as women are already expected to be trained at their jobs by virtue of their being female. In addition, the segregation of labor with women working "domestic" jobs solidifies cultural norms that consider the "female" domestic sphere separate from the "male" non-domestic sphere, reinforcing traditional prejudices and continuing the oppression of women. Anthropologist Anna Tsing, a valuable voice on this topic, refers to this type of gendered exploitation as the "superexploitation" of women.

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One effect of globalization on gender dynamics is the increase in employment for women, which is often exploitative of women in developing countries. The "feminization of labor" refers to the effects of globalization on women's work participation. Globalization has resulted in more flexible employment, which makes it easier for women with children to work, but with lower wages and deteriorating labor standards. While women have access to more jobs in the globalized economy, they are performing these jobs for lower pay in worse conditions than men in their countries, and without a decrease in their share of domestic and child-related responsibilities. Globalization has not solved other employment-related problems for women, including gendered segregation of occupation, the gender wage gap, and lack of job training. In many countries exploited for resources under globalization, including those in Latin America and East Asia, women are increasingly segregated to low-wage labor in the textile and garment industries.

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How has globalization affected gender issues?

As with all inquiry into globalization, the answer is complex.  On one hand, I think that a case can be made that globalization has constructed a homogeneity where generating wealth and its accumulation are the only elements that matter.  Globalization has blurred gender issues with its emphasis on material consumerism and the idea that technological advances can make everyone "the same."  A case can be made that globalization has empowered the those in the position of power and the drive for money has reduced the complexity of gender issues to issues of wealth and poverty.  In this light, the focus on class and material reality has obscured the fight for gender equality.  Globalization has sought to make the international bazaar one in which we examine commercial progress and access to the benefits of such progress, sometimes at the cost of gender issues or gender awareness.  In a world linked by cellular technology, driven by the latest "tablet," and one where Skyping and Tweeting are all that matter, gender issues seem to blur into something more homogeneous.

However, an equally compelling case can be made that these elements that have sought to make our world "smaller" have also generated a resurgence of gender awareness.  Women who might have lived lives in other parts of the world, unaware of how other women live, can now demonstrate an understanding what it means to be a woman around the world.  Technology has enabled the woman in sub Saharan Africa to understand what it means to be a woman in Beijing.  The woman in New York City can see what life is like in rural India.  Being a woman has become something that can be transmitted and communicated with greater ease in a globalized setting.  Along these lines, the fight for gender identity has become something that is not "Western" or "Eastern" but rather a global issue for all.  For example, when Malala is shot, it is not a statement about women's rights in Pakistan, but rather one that opens a discussion about education for women around the world.  Feminism is becoming largely understood as not merely a construct of "the West," but something that all women around the world must comprehend:

Female genital mutilation has been justified on the grounds that it is a cultural tradition. The idea that women should not be deprived of their most basic rights has been dubbed “cultural imperialism,” so that feminism is billed as an attempt to impose American or Western culture in other countries.  As feminists we need to know this argument is not true. Women from all cultures in the world want to have full equality to men, want to have the right to selfdetermination, to education, to birth control. These are not Western and certainly not American ideas. The suggestion that they are is merely a ploy on the part of backlash movements.

At the same time, embracing a more globalized view of what it means to be a woman has sought to reinvigorate a discussion of what it means to be a woman all over the world.  Many women in the West see issues of contraception denial in one part of the world as something that must be stopped everywhere:  "Americans have their own contingent of people who believe in forcing women back into the home, denying them control over reproduction and economic self-determination."  In this light, it can be argued that globalization has done much to universalize the cause of women's rights, impacting gender issues in a progressive manner.

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