Gender and globalization: female labor and women ’s mobilization

This paper casts a gender perspective on globalization to illuminate the contradictory effects on women workers and on women ’s activism.The paper begins by examining the various dimensions of globalization (economic,political,and cultural) with a focus on their contradictory social-gender effects. These include:

• inequalities in the global economy
• the continued hegemony of the core
• the feminization of labor
• the withering away of the developmentalist/welfarist state
• the rise of identity politics and other forms of particularism
• the spread of concepts of human rights and women ’s rights
• the proliferation of women ’s organizations and transnational feminist networks

The author concludes that although globalization has had dire economic effects, the process has created a new constituency (working women and organizing women) who may herald potent anti-systemic movement. [author]