Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy.

GLOBAL WOMAN: NANNIES, MAIDS, AND SEX WORKERS IN THE NEW ECONOMY

Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, eds. (Henry Holt and Company, 2004)

Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild's collection of essays chronicles the gendering of economic relations between rich and poor countries around the world, with the so-called First World playing the pampered patriarch who makes a killing--sometimes literally--on the obscured domestic toil of Third World women's bodies. In the fifteen essays presented, along with a small set of annotated maps and a chart, the contributors take up specific, local conditions, such as the tenuous position of live-in maids and nannies in Los Angeles County, the double-bind of migrant domestics in Taiwan, and the plight of sex workers in the Dominican Republic. The lived realities of these specifically located women are then connected to several themes in relation to global trends in female migration including the failures of (white) U.S. feminism, the propagation of what Cherrie Moraga has called "the obsessive individualism of Western thought" and "Corporate Amerika's cultural arrogance," the institutionalization of global economic inequalities through such international financial institutions as the IMF and World Bank, and the systemic racism that undergirds it all via the logic of late capitalism. Ultimately the collection aims to bring the diaspora of Third World women, and its causes, out of obscurity: to make the invisible visible to the myopic Western eye.

Several essays, including those by Ehrenreich, Hochschild, Susan Cheever, and Nicole Constable, examine the ways in which U.S. feminism, in its predominantly white, middle-class manifestation, has reinforced social inequalities. Of particular significance here is the critique of men's role in the reproduction and intensification of the servant economy worldwide. That is, the freedoms of First World women are accommodated by the migratory labor of Third World women precisely because Western men have refused to take up domestic responsibilities. Thus, as women in the U.S. and other increasingly technologized countries exercise their "rights" to work and recreate beyond the domestic sphere, women from underdeveloped nations must be imported to keep the home fires burning. Moreover, the industrialization of domestic labor through the incorporation of cleaning, child care, and other household services threatens to victimize workers even further as employer-employee relationships are depersonalized. Under this arrangement the "maid-mistress" relationship is eliminated, as Ehrenreich notes, but the exploitation of poor women and women of color who work for horrendously low wages and no benefits becomes, conveniently, a "company" problem.

Bridget Anderson, Lynn May Rivas, and Pei-Chia Lan explore the connections between female migration and the ideology of individualism. As Western media in general and the American entertainment industry in particular spread to cover the furthest reaches of the planet, migration from poor to richer countries escalates, with workers in search of "independence," "self-reliance," and their share of the Western-world pie. Yet, as Rivas explains, instead of becoming "self-made" individuals, their First World employers often conflate their independence with the invisibility of the poor women of color who are their domestic workers. Conversely, in middle- to upper-class Western homes the ostentatious display of domestic laborers can function as a status symbol in a world in which what one owns, the "service" of a maid or nanny in this case, becomes--in a familiar capitalist contradiction--the very sign of one's self-determination. When "making it" on a domestic worker's wages proves impossible, migrant women often return to the Third World, where securing the trappings of Western-world success proves to be more "affordable," after years, or even decades, of laboring abroad.

Other essays, such as those by Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, Joy M. Zarembka, Hung Cam Thai, and Saskia Sassen, recount the effects of what could, with some justice, be labeled as the international crimes of the IMF and the World Bank. The fact that many of the poorest countries in the world, which are further impoverished through forced economic "restructuring," are economically sustained by remittances from their exported female overseas contact workers (OCWs) is not news to many, but the exploitation and abuse suffered by such women remains hidden on the whole. For example, while nearly fifty-percent of the Filipino population (by some accounts more) relies on the remittances of its OCWs for subsistence, they are excoriated in the local media for a "care crisis" that has left their children feeling alienated and their husbands estranged. Meanwhile, according to cultural studies scholar E. San Juan, Jr., about five or six of those OCWs return home daily, in coffins. Moreover, while the IMF and World Bank require local governments to cut social services, reduce and freeze wages, and devalue currency in order to secure development loans--forcing the transnational migration of millions of domestic workers--they also keep the whereabouts of A-3 and G-5 (visas for the employees of diplomats and international agencies, respectively) domestic workers "confidential," despite common complaints of psychological, physical, and sexual abuse on the part of past workers.

Underlying all of this is the racism that results in the unequal power relations that keep poor women of color from objecting to the unfair employment practices they suffer even as the "care work" of the "global woman" is naturalized and essentialized by her Western employers. Accordingly, the researchers included in this collection make noteworthy connections. Several of the pieces included document the ways in which familial rhetoric is deployed in order to further exploit the labor of domestic workers and reinforce their imposed inferior status. Talk of being "one of the family" serves as an excuse to demand unpaid labor or labor that goes beyond existing contractual agreements. Additionally, employers often mandate that domestics doff makeup, nail polish, skirts, dresses, or any clothing and personal adornment that may be interpreted as "seductive," by whatever arbitrary standards, ostensibly to protect their female employees; under the guise of maternalism, the racialized body of the woman worker is severely policed. Hence, even "through kindness, pity, and charity the employer asserts her power," as Anderson notes. In the sex and entertainment industries, the Orientalist fantasies of First World men are rehearsed on the bodies of brown women even as First World women fetishize the safe nanny-love of their migrant maids. Meanwhile, in developing countries women compensate for their own subjugation to conventional non-Western gender relations, such as the Taiwanese ideal of three-generation cohabitation, by buying the labor of surrogate domestics who are assumed to be racially and economically inferior.

In their efforts to document the current global dilemma, the writers included, most of whom are trained in sociology or anthropology, use an array of qualitative observational research methods combined with data compilation and analysis. They also acknowledge, however, that the data pertaining to the millions of illegal migrant workers and victims of human trafficking are frustratingly incomplete. Still, Global Woman provides a valuable picture of the crisis at hand, with a sharp focus on its breadth and depth. To be sure, a few of the essays fall short of providing the systemic analysis necessary to substantively challenge racism and sexism in the era of late capitalism with all of its attendant complexities; and there is an occasional tendency to fall into a predictable Western objectivist perspective that teeters dangerously on the edge of victim-blame. In addition, some readers might take issue with what seems like an evasive mincing around such unambiguous terminology as "capitalism," "colonization," and "imperialism" (the editors, Rivas, Pei-Chia Lan, Kevin Bales, and Sassen are significant exceptions). Such objections will be assuaged if readers keep in mind the fact that this collection is not meant to preach to the choir. Rather, it seeks to persuade skeptical audiences and rally them to action against the injustices suffered by the countless poor women of color who are on the move across the globe at this very moment. That given, Global Woman is indispensable reading for the radical teacher who would provide her students a point of entry into the discussion about, and fight against, social injustice globalized by the West.