Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy

The single most important and astonishing statistic in Global Woman is that half the world's 120 million legal and illegal migrants are now believed to be women. Globalisation has its female underside and it involves a process whereby women in rich countries, often those who have succeeded in a tough "male world", find career success only by turning over the care of their children, elderly parents and homes to women from the developing world. The flipside of this is that millions of poor women leave their own children and families and migrate north to serve as nannies, maids and sometimes sex workers. In short there has been a global transfer of the services associated with a wife's traditional role--child care, homemaking and sex--from poor countries to rich ones. The authors think of this transfer in terms of a "care deficit"

The 15 detailed and well-researched essays collected here range from personal recollections to broad economic analysis spanning the globe from Taiwan to Mexico and from Thailand to the Dominican Republic. They cover such topics as the transfer of emotional resources, the pressures global capitalism puts on women and their families and the ways that women's migration has modified relationships between men and women--both through marriage and through the global sex trade. Most importantly, the contributors have brought the personal stories of those the authors call "the world's most invisible women" into the light. This is essential and disturbing reading for all those interested in the effects of global capitalism, along with Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed--Undercover in Low-wage America. --Larry Brown