Gender And Globalization Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Gender refers to a set of qualities and behaviors expected from a female or male person by society. Gender roles are nurtured or learned, are socially determined, and can evolve over time. In contrast, an individual’s sex has traditionally been thought not to change, being based in biology and “hard” science. Scholars in more recent years, however, have suggested that sex may be as socially constructed as gender. Feminine and masculine norms and ascribed behaviors vary widely across the globe, within and among cultures, and across time. More recently, the trends of globalization have affected gender. The term globalization here is used to mean the acceleration or intensification of economic, political, social, and cultural relations across state borders. Mainstream scholars often analyze globalism by using neoliberal concepts such as free trade, deregulation, and privatization. However, these lenses tend to ignore the way that experiences of men vary with those of women. There has been a recent shift to recognize gender-differentiated vantage points and experiences due to globalization.

While neoliberalism scholarship emphasizes that globalization has improved the lives of some, recent feminist scholarship suggests that such gains can be differentiated by gender. Despite increased access to information, technology, goods, and services for many people, both women and men have suffered under political and economic globalization. The poorest and most marginalized people in the world are suffering more than they are benefiting under globalization, and women constitute a majority of this population. In areas such as conflict and security, economic access and poverty, health care, human rights, and political power, there is a gendered difference in the impacts of globalization.

Neoliberals emphasize that globalization has helped foster the spread of formal democracy. Feminist scholars have shown that this has not, however, directly translated into increased political equality and influence for women. Women have less numerical and substantive representation in formal political channels than do men. Legal standards established by constitutional provisions or statutes—such as electoral gender quotas or the international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), adopted internationally in 1979 and stemming from international work on human rights dating back to the 1960s—are important but have fallen short in leveling the political playing field for women.

The gendered gap between rich and poor is increasing due to certain features of globalization both across and within the global North and South. Women in the North are losing jobs as a result of outsourcing of jobs to the South. The dismantling of the welfare state in much of the South is a large burden on people—mostly women—who have lost health services, educational access, child care, and agricultural and economic supplements. Aid to Southern countries typically benefits men, providing extension training, agricultural inputs, and market access to male farmers. The informal economy, in which most women in the developing world work and from which they gain the means for the survival of themselves, their children, and their communities, is usually overlooked by formal economic assistance.

Active, armed conflicts under globalization have shifted in type (internal vs. international) and frequency (more regular), and this has had an unequally adverse effect on women. Reasons for the change in types and prevalence of violent conflict include the spread of arms, global climate change, and interactions of people in competition for scarce resources. Women bear a disproportionate share of the burden of this insecurity. An increasing number of conflict casualties (death, wounded, or displaced) are civilian rather than combatants, including women and those for whom they have charge: children, the sick, and the elderly. Women also suffer when tax revenues are shifted to military spending from social programs on which they and their children depend. Militarism pollutes the environment, hurting the crops on which women depend to provide for their families and increasing health concerns to which women must attend. Finally, insecurity and violence in the public arena encourage active and passive violence against women in private. Women are increasing victims of wartime rapes and domestic violence correlating with global insecurity.

Far from being passive, women have redefined the aims and indicators of globalization and development through work under such initiatives as the United Nations “Decade for Women” (1976–1985) and global women’s movements, such as women fighting for their own and their country’s liberation in Chile, women fighting for the equal rights of all citizens in Australia, or women struggling against oppressive social norms and public policies that perpetuate gender oppression in the context of problematic caste and class issues in India. Although there have been significant gains in political, cultural, and economic benefits to women under globalization, on the whole, globalization has been detrimental to women.

Bibliography:

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Boserup, Ester. Woman’s Role in Economic Development. London: Allen and Unwin, 1970.
Boulding, Elise, and Heather Parker. “Women and Development.” In Introducing Global Issues, 3rd ed., edited by Michael T. Snarr and D. Neil Snarr, 179–194. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2005.
Holm, Hans-Henrik, and Georg Sorensen, eds. Whose World Order? Uneven Globalization and the End of the Cold War. Boulder:Westview Press, 1995.
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Lorber, Judith. Paradoxes of Gender. New Haven:Yale University Press, 1995.
Moghadam,Valentine M. “Gender and Globalization: Female Labor and Women’s Mobilization.” Journal of World-Systems Research 5, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 367–388.
Morgan, Robin. Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women’s Movement Anthology. New York: Feminist Press, 1996.
Peterson,V. Spike, and Anne Sisson Runyan. Global Gender Issues. 2nd ed. Boulder:Westview Press, 1999.
Snarr, Michael T., and D. Neil Snarr, eds. Introducing Global Issues. 3rd ed. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2005.

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