“Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy”

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. With GL, women are on the move as never before • There’s growing migration of millions of women from poor countries to rich ones, where they serve as nannies, maids and sex workers • Lacking help from male partners, many women have succeeded in “male world” careers only by turning over care of children, elderly parents, and homes to women from the Third World

3. The female underside of globalization • Millions of women from poor countries in the south migrate to do the “women’s 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, and sisters-in-law

4. The pattern of female migration reflects a “worldwide gender revolution” • In both rich and 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. Migration of women from the Third World to do “women’s work” in rich countries has received little attention • Many, though not all, of new female migrant workers are women of color • The work tends to be private and “indoors,” or in the case of sex work, illegal and hidden • Influenced by the Western culture of individualism, affluent career women want to be seen as “doing it all,” and therefore discount and disguise the paid “help”

6. The lifestyles of the First World are made possible by a global transfer of “women’s work” from poor countries to rich ones • 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. Historical precedents for the globalization of traditional female services • In the ancient Middle East, the women of populations defeated in war were routinely enslaved and to serve as household workers and concubines for the victors • Among the Africans brought to N America as slaves in the 16th – 19th centuries, about 1/3 were women & children, and many became concubines and domestic servants • 19th century Irishwomen–and rural Englishwomen-- migrated to English towns and cities to work as domestics in homes of growing upper middle class

8. The feminization of migration • From 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% • Overall, half of the world’s 120 million legal and illegal migrants are now believed to be women • Patterns of international migration vary from region to region, but women migrants from a surprising # of sending countries actually outnumber men, sometimes by a wide margin (See pp. 533-534)

9. Composition of household workforce in US has changed with the life chances of different ethnic groups • In late 19th century, Irish and German immigrants served the northern upper and 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 Women’s Work” Harper's, 4/1/2000)

10. Governments of some sending countries actively encourage women to migrate • Governments reason that migrant women are more likely than male counterparts to send hard-earned wages back to their families • In general, these women send home anywhere from half to nearly all of what they earn • These remittances have a significant impact on lives of families and kin – as well as on cash-strapped Third World governments

11. “Care deficit”pulls migrants from Third World and postcommunist countries; poverty pushes them • Throughout western Europe, Taiwan, Japan, and esp. in the US, women’s employment has increased dramatically since the 1970s • Meanwhile, as rich countries have grown richer, poor countries have become – in both absolute and relative terms – poorer • 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. The globalization of women’s 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 women’s entry into workforce • Any view of globalization of domestic work as simply an arrangement among women omits the role of men

13. Push factors not so simple either • Female migrants are not the most impoverished, so it isn’t absolute poverty that pushes them • 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 influence decision to migrate • 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. GL of child care & housework brings independent women of the world together –but not as sisters & allies with common goals • Instead they come together across a great divide of privilege and opportunity • A global relationship has formed that in some ways mirrors the traditional relationship between the 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