index of 2005 conference papers

Feminist Frameworks for Women in the Global Economy

Peggy Rivage-Seul
Berea College, U.S.

This year in my classes at Berea College, I am using a book entitled, Global Woman, edited by two outstanding social thinkers from the United States—Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild. 1 The collection of carefully researched essays gives students a graphic sense of the multiple effects of globalization on women and their families. This book makes visible the dynamic of first and third world women’s working relationships in the transfer of domestic services from low-to-high-income countries, as well as problems in the international sex industry.

There have been mixed reviews for this book circulating the globe. The Guardian Weekly published a review arguing that Global Woman reveals the dirty secret of feminism, namely that we in the professional class have walked up the ladder of institutional success by leaving our houses and children in the hands of underpaid and overworked women from third world countries. Research shows that the relationships between professional women and domestic workers and nannies fail to acknowledge the importance of the international domestic worker’s family responsibilities and needs in her home country. What is left unsaid in such critiques is the complicity of male partners in households hiring international domestic workers. At the same time, Arlie Hochschild points out, progressive women are not paying attention either. 2 The brutal forms of capitalist exploitation occur in the personal center of the home, and there is no space on feminist agendas to discuss the issue.

As I reflect on the important themes of women in the global economy, in particular, the large scale selling of women’s services, from house cleaners to care givers to sex workers, I am reminded of Peggy McIntosh’s work on the interactive phases of thinking about women’s studies. (See attached diagram.) Peggy’s work has shaped the way we think about women in the academy in the United States . McIntosh, her five phases of thinking about women's studies are not static. One does not necessarily graduate from one stage to the next. Instead, she argues that we move in and out of situations that place us in different phase behaviors. Some of the contradictions we see in the relationship dynamics between first and third world women might be explained by an interactive phase theory of human development that builds on Peggy’s McIntosh’s framework for thinking about women’s studies.

The McIntosh Model

In her classic essay, "The Interactive Phases of Women's Studies Curriculum," Peggy McIntosh outlines five phases of thinking about women and illustrates their use in standard university courses. 3 To understand her conceptualization, one has to imagine a pyramid that has a decisive fault line running through its middle.

In Phase I, women are totally absent, and virtually un-represented in the curriculum. Biology is still destiny, so women's contributions are limited to the domestic sphere. What counts as significant work is carried on by men in the public domain, and their accounts are the stuff of history.

Phase II thinking is closely related to a womanless curriculum. It presents a few token women, largely for the sake of political correctness. However, this does alter the competitive, "win lest you lose" value that governs Phase I and II thinking.

Along the fault line on the pyramid, McIntosh locates Phase III. It is clear that women are producing cracks in the structure, for they will not be ignored. They are considered a problem because they are challenging the radical exclusionary character of the first two phases. This is because women with critical consciousness see for themselves the pyramid structure that has been shaped to exclude them.

In Phase IV thinking women own their roles as social actors, making history in their daily tasks of caring for others, washing dishes, and working in the community. Here, instead of denigrating these tasks, the work of women is recognized as fundamental building blocks of culture.

In the final phase of McIntosh's model, as men and women, students and teachers, we begin to think in terms of systems of race, culture, caste, class, gender, religion, and other influences yet to be named. In other words, Phase V is totally inclusive. There is room for everyone.

Human Development Model

In the language of the United Nations and international non-governmental agencies, the term “human development” denotes the myriad of factors involved in realizing the full potential of people, including men, women, and children. Like women’s studies, this field is controversial, and can be characterized by an interactive phase theory similar to that of Peggy McIntosh. I am suggesting that it is possible to use this model to shed light on phases of globalization and the way those phases of thinking impact women.

Phase I: People-less Development

The first phase of globalized thinking is purely theoretical It is what we find in the writings of Freidrich Hayak , Milton Freidman, and other members of the Chicago School . 4 Human concerns are calculated into economic abstractions where the "bottom line" determines a culture's policy. The real expert is a mathematician capable of forecasting a future of healthy capitalist economic growth. Like the McIntosh model, in this phase of thinking, women's work is literally left out of the equation. That is to say, neither the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) nor the Gross National Product (GNP) takes into account the work of women in the domestic sphere when designing human development programs. Instead, the only work that figures into economic development schemas is that of paid labor. Consequently, the tasks of preparing meals, caring for children, doing laundry, washing dishes, and cleaning house are not considered economic factors when planning for the healthy development of individual nations. However, when poor women perform these tasks for the wealthy elite, women's domestic work is elevated to wage labor and becomes part of the GDP. Nevertheless, for the vast majority, the unpaid domestic work of women belongs outside Phase I thinking about human development.

This is the level of economic theorizing. It sits at the top of the pyramid because economic theory is the most highly prized of human endeavors in our current epoch of globalization. Such thinking is totally abstract and disconnected from the earth and its inhabitants. While McIntosh focuses on the absence of women in Phase I, the attentive social critic would say that men and children are also ignored in this human development model. This phase of thinking rests on the notion that competition is best way to achieve success. People are not necessary here since most of the work is mathematical. This theory has been with us since 1776, when Adam Smith published the Wealth ofNations. In 1929, the Great Depression threatened his laissez-faire theory of economics. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal Program” empowered the U.S. government to spend billions of dollars on public enterprises that would ensure living wages for U.S. citizens. This included enormous social safety nets like Food Stamps for the low income, the Social Security Program that promised a monthly income for everyone over 65 years of age. The Welfare State and the human face of capitalism overshadowed the Chicago ’s School until the OPEC oil crisis of 1973. The rise in oil prices world-wide made the expensive social programs in the United States untenable, and Adam Smith’s free market ideas re-emerged as neo-liberalism for the New World Order. The prevailing ideology of the New World Order is really the old colonial order, only this time administered by the United States .

Phase II: Corporate Globalization

Phase II thinking is still largely people-less, but here producers come into the equation. Multinational corporations are involved in this phase as the privileged few whose businesses and profits will “trickle down” to benefit the rest of humanity. This is the phase of implementing the neo-liberal economic theory of Phase I. The chance to practice the theory came with the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 that created a crisis among multinational corporations whose costs were astronomically inflated by the rising price of oil. 5 Multinational companies began to reassess their activity in the world and resolved that they would not be the ones to bear the economic loss for the heightened prices that Arabs were asking for their own oil. In keeping with neo-liberal thinking , MNC’s would shift the costs downward to the working class and to its lowest rungs where women are located. This shift of responsibility took the form of world-wide structural adjustments, including the familiar elements of privatization, reduction of government spending, consequent loss of social services, reduction in environmental protection, and above all, lowering of wages. This negatively affected the world’s working class, especially its most vulnerable members, namely women and children. Here women and children are the preferred employees because they work for less, are easily intimidated, and are sexual prey in maquilas located in free trade zones throughout the world.

The ideology justifying this classic notion of “trickle down” is the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats, so if the corporations prospered so would the working class. The problem of course, is that this has never worked, and statistics show that workers make less today than 20 years ago. In keeping with this largely people-less phase of thinking, we can note that the decisions affecting the human development of the world’s majority are made by a handful of people in three international financial institutions, sometimes referred to as the “pagan trinity” because they are able to direct the entire process of neo-liberal globalization. These are the World Trade Organization, The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Phase III: People as a Problem

Phase III thinking views people as problems, or impediments to realizing the golden age of neoliberalism and free trade. Like McIntosh’s model, women create the most problems because they are the producers of children. There is a surplus population on the planet, particularly among the poor. High incidences of unemployment and illness are blamed on the poor, especially the women. But it is also at this stage of thinking that people begin to realize that they are excluded from the economic system, and begin to protest their deliberate exclusion.

In this stage, people are beginning to protest such forms of structural violence, beginning in Seattle , Washington in 1999 at the Third Ministerial Conference of the WTO. Over 40,000 citizens from across the globe gathered at the “ Summit of the Millenium” to interrupt the negotiations. More large-scale protests have followed: In 2000, at the Meetings of the World Bank and IMF in Washington D.C. and Prague, the Czech Republic; in 2001, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and Cancun, Mexico; the Summit of the Americas in Quebec, Canada; and the Meeting of the Group of Seven 6 in Genoa, Italy. While these gatherings have become increasingly more secluded, in order to deter organized protests, world-wide activist continue to clamor against transnational policy-makers. Women’s voices, in particular, were raised in the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women to demand gender equity, and are currently working to put the agreements of the Beijing gathering into law.

Phase IV: People’s Globalization

Phase IV looks to the future, when neo-liberalism has been left behind. Thinking in this stage ahs moved well-below the fault line that separates competition from cooperation. In Phase IV, human diversity is not only accepted but celebrated. All sectors of society are working together for the benefit of all. Workers, union representatives, women, children, corporations, and governments sit at the table as equals in dialogue. The environment is also represented by the presence of the hawk, the salmon, the deer and the leopard. These are symbols of the four basic elements of air, water, earth, and fire. In short, more people sit at the bargaining table because there are so many points of view to consider.

Like the McIntosh model, a shift in thinking has occurred. In phase four thought, we move from scarcity to plenty. There is an abundance of food and natural resources to keep the human family healthy. Studies such as Frances Moore Lappe’s work on the political causes of hunger has become, by this stage, textbook reading in schools. Women’s daily work of washing dishes, making tortillas, and caring for family has been elevated to the “real work” of the world. Those who provide cleaning, cooking, and nanny services for others are unionized and well-paid. Borders are open for migration because globalization means fair access to goods and services for everyone.

There are expressions of this phase of thinking in the Global Social Forums held annually since 2001. With the exception of 2004 when the GSF was held in Mumbai , India , these meetings of over 100,000 activists, scholars, workers, and non-governmental organizations have been held in the socialist Porto Alegre , Brazil .

Phase V: Postmodern Development

By the fifth phase of interactive human development, there is a recognition that indigenous culture and traditions are the key to vitality and survival of the species. This recognition occurs because groups of people who have worked their own land for centuries and millennia possess a u nique understanding of community needs and how to meet them. In this phase, Western civilization is seen as basically destructive because it is recognized that lives have not been improved by the intervention of Western nations. Here even the issue of human rights themselves is seen as an imposition of the West, concocted in order to provide reason for intrusive intervention in the economic and political affairs of well-established cultures.

Indigenous cultures themselves have their own rules and procedures for crime and punishment, and have no need of Westerners to “enlighten” them about such issues. On the contrary, the imposition of the Western human rights agenda on indigenous cultures has led not only to a loss of culture, but also to despair, destruction of family, suicide, divorce, drug addiction, domestic violence and an abusive judicial system.

Conclusion

This feminist framework for thinking about women in the global economy is useful, only if it moves us forward in the project of human survival and the realization of our full human potential. Peggy McIntosh’s work in phase theory did this for the field of women’s studies. The translation of her work into the arena of human development helps us to appreciate the contradictory behaviors of earnest teachers and thinkers. We can view Barbara Ehrenreich’s criticism of feminist bosses exploiting domestic workers as a slip into Phase III thinking that sees poor workers as surplus population. At the same time, we see perhaps the same feminists operating at phase four when they participate in the World Social Forum. As long as we continue to live in a patriarchal pyramid, we can expect to move in and out of critical consciousness about women in the global economy.

1 Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild (editors). Global Woman. ( New York: Metropolitan Books,), 2002.

2 Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002, p.90.

3 Peggy McIntosh. ”Interactive Phases of Curricular Revision: A Feminist Perspective.”(Mass: Wellesley Center for Research on Women), 1983.

4 The Chicago School of Economics represents theoretical foundations of what has become known as the Washington Consensus. Its founder was Friedrich Hayak and his pupil, Milton Friedman.

5 See Jose Victor Aguilar and Miguel Cavada Diez. Free Trade: Free Reign for Transnational Corporations. ( Washington: EPICA/Equipo Maiz), 2003.

6 The presidents of the seven richest and most powerful countries: United States, England, Germany, France, Canada, Italy and Japan.

See Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collinns. Twelve Myths of Hunger. ( New York: Grove Press), 1998.

See Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakesh. Grassroots Postmodernism. ( London: Zed Books), 1998. Chapter 4, “Human Rights: The Trojan Horse of Recolonization.”

index of 2005 conference papers