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Global Women in the New Economy
BARBARA EHRENREICH AND ARLIE RUSSELL HOCHSCHILD
Summary In this selection, Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Hochschild look at an important aspect of globalization: the movement of poor women from Third World societies to wealthier nations. Published as the introduction to Global Women: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy, the piece begins with the story of a Sri Lankan woman serving as a nanny to a two-year-old child in Greece. The subject of a documentary film, When Mother Comes Home for Christmas, Josephene Perera has been a migrant worker for 10 years. She earns enough to support her three children at home, but only gets to see them once a year. Over time two of her children show signs of distress. Despite this, she returns once again to her job in Greece, trading a life of poverty at home for money in a distant land. Put another way, she gives up her family life to make one for parents who work full time in a wealthy nation.
The authors stress several points about the flow of immigrant workers over the last few years. Movement has occurred between poor and rich countries. The international workforce, once largely consisting of men, now includes a substantial number of women, laboring as domestics, nannies, and sex-for-hire workers. The change marks a different relationship between rich and poor nations. Once rich nations mined poor ones for their natural resources; now they mine them for people. Four migration patterns stand out: one is the flow of workers from Southeast Asia to the Middle and Far East; a second from Eastern to Western Europe; a third from South and Central America to North America; and a fourth from Africa to Europe. In many of these places, foreign workers have taken domestic jobs once held by local people. For example, in America maids and nannies were once largely the domain of black women. These jobs are now largely filled by Latinas. Poor countries have come to value the money sent home by their citizens working abroad, and some have programs to prepare female citizens for foreign service and to find jobs abroad.
There are a number of factors that attract poor women to do overseas work. There are plenty of jobs for domestics in wealthier countries because so many women there have gone to work in what was once a largely male economy. Job opportunities are even greater in First World countries, because governments have not instituted programs to help their working women with child care and other domestic needs; men have not stepped in to fill the gap at home; and men have created a demand for sex-for-hire workers. In addition, as the wealth gap between rich and poor countries grows, women from poor countries can make many times the amount of money they could earn at home by taking jobs abroad.
Women may also be "pushed" to leave their countries in order to work abroad. Some leave to escape abuse at home. Many women who leave are well educated but had found no reasonably paid opportunities.
In "Global Women in the New Economy," Ehrenreich and Hochschild argue that most women who migrate from poor countries to rich ones cannot get work in their home countries because they are so poorly educated.

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