Globalization and Women: Power, Work, and Social Change in the Modern World

Globalization has had such negative consequences for women and children that some commentators argue that 'globalization is a man'.  Globalization has contradictory effects on women. Those who assign male gender to globalization are right to point to how women's role in reproduction and the family means they suffer more from the effects of the neoliberal agenda but that's only half the story.  It has also brought great freedom to women, especially those living in traditionally conservative countries. Ultimately, by bringing women into the workforce, globalization has given women a power they lacked in the past - the power to end the system that breeds poverty, exploitation and oppression. The global development of capitalism over the last 20 years has depended almost everywhere on women pouring into the formal workforce. The expansion of global capitalism has also seen the partial socialization of housework in developed countries to an extent which has gone largely unremarked. Increasing numbers of women are earning enough through labour outside the home to be able to reduce the labour they expend inside it by taking advantage of this socialization.