Gender & Globalization
Gender & Globalization
Gender & Globalization
Globalization
By: Amanda Beniaris, Jackie Drees, Maria
Gordo, Kayra Silva & Megan Verhey
What does gender
equality mean to
you?
Gender, Capitalism,
and Globalization
Joan Acker
Main Points
● Defines Globalization & Gender
● Is Globalization Neutral? NO
● Answers One Question: Is Globalization actually Gendered?
○ 1. Gender as embedded in Globalizing Capitalism
○ 2. The Gendered Effects of Globalization
“But in this address I challenge our profession to take this responsibility in our
scholarship and our professional lives; to observe, to reveal, and to strike down
the conceptual and cultural walls that justify inequality on the basis of sex in all
of society’s institutions - to transgress.”
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_u12xsnlGs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_9l54aBaBM
Discussion Questions:
● Minority women in the industrialized work force in third world countries are
consistently marginalized
● Free trade zones allow for corporations to use women for cheap labor and
overwork them to gain profit
● Challenges idea of “class consciousness” and a proposes to frame the issue
as one of cultural struggle rather than class struggle
Methodology: Ong breaks down the different ways in which women are regulated
in the workforce in third world nations
Modes of Regulation
Claims on Daughters
Factory regulations: the gaze and the body Social Regulations: Women in Public Spaces
● Women wanting to work and trying to regain their rights was seen as acting outside
of traditional realm of femininity
● Women eventually began to demand more respect leading to female class solidarity
○ Working slower when ordered to work faster
○ Claiming “female” problems or religious prayer to get off the floor
○ Protesting long work days and low wages, demanding human rights
Critiques and Concluding Thoughts
Strengths
Concluding Thoughts
● Many examples female work environments
across the globe ● Worker consciousness is more
● Many examples showing resistance efforts than just class awareness
of women in oppressive workplaces ○ Institutions like kinship,
● Strong support for argument class is not the
state, gender, religion, etc.
sole factor that defines a person’s agency
play a role
Weaknesses ● Through their oppression and
resistance efforts, female
● Hard to follow explanations of each mode of workers are able to gain
regulation
stronger sense of self-worth
○ Jumps around a lot between countries
Current Event: The Truth About
Samsung’s Horrifying Factories
● Half of all Samsung phones are manufactured in Vietnam by female majority workforces in their
20s.
○ Interviews w/ 45 women who work on assembly lines in those factories
○ Women experienced episodes of dizziness or fainting at work
○ Women stood for 70-80 hours a week while working, leading to pain in their bones, joints and legs
○ Not a single worker received a copy of her work contract, which is a violation of Vietnamese labor law
● Reports that miscarriage is very normal
● Samsung tried to prevent the truth of the working conditions from coming out by threatening
workers with firing and lawsuits if they spoke out
As consumers with knowledge of factory working conditions, what compels us to still purchase these
products?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/03/14/your-cool-new-samsung-smartphone-brought-
you-noise-pain-miscarriages-pham-digangi-column/397173002/