1st Edition

The Gender Question in Globalization Changing Perspectives and Practices

By Francien van Driel, Tine Davids Copyright 2005

    Orthodox views of globalization assume that it has the same features and impact everywhere, i.e. the feminization of poverty, labour and even peace. As these ideas circulate in official documents and scientific writings, they settle practically as truths. This challenging and unique book is amongst the first to deconstruct these orthodoxies, using a multi-layered gender analysis where globalization is not treated as a linear and top-down process with a known outcome and a pre-conceived definition of gender. Instead, the authors scrutinize the dynamics of each context on its own merits, including the agency of women and men, resulting in unexpected and groundbreaking insights into the variety of differences apparent, even in sometimes seemingly similar global processes. Through this gender lens, different and new meanings of gender appear, rooted in multiple modernities. The book will be a seminal contribution to debates in the fields of international labour, sexuality, identity, feminism, peace studies and migration.

    Contents: Introduction: Changing perspectives, Tine Davids and Francien van Driel. Local Lived Realities: Agency Instead of Victimization: The gendered reconstruction of the Argentine auto components industry, Lineke Stobbe; Professionalization, sexualization: when global meets local in the working identities of secretaries in Lima Peru, Lorraine Nencel; Being a man: young masculinities and safe sex in Dakar, Anouka van Eerdewijk. Unexpected Outcomes: Globalization and the Production of Difference: The global localization of feminist knowledge: translating Our Bodies, Ourselves, Kathy Davis; Global peace builders and local conflict: the feminization of peace in Southern Sudan, Dorothea Hilhorst and Mathijs van Leeuwen; Gendered travels: single mothers' experiences at the global/local interface, Annelou Ypeij; Reproductive rights violations: a comparison of export-oriented industries in Mexico and Morocco, Fenneke Reysoo. Glocalized Gender Identities: Tradition and Modernity Deconstructed: Dowry in India: respected tradition and modern monstrosity, Marion den Uyl; On globalization, gender and the Nation-State: Muslim masculinity and the urban middle class family in Islamist Sudan, Karin Willemse; Political representation and the ambiguity of Mexican motherhood, Tine Davids; Layered meanings of community: experiences of Iranian women exiles in 'Irangeles', Halleh Ghorashi; Conclusion: Gender and globalization: an analytical alliance, Tine Davids and Francien van Driel; Index.

    Biography

    Tine Davids is a Lecturer and Francien van Driel is an Associate Professor both in the Centre for International Development Issues Nijmegen (CIDIN), Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands.

    'Using a "gender lens" to explore the ramifications of globalization for women and men in different parts of the world, the editors and contributors of The Gender Question in Globalization have produced a fascinating and timely analysis of gender's central place in the intersection between global and local processes...This book should be a must readĀ not only for dedicated scholars of Gender, but for any Social Scientist with an interest in globalization.' Sylvia Chant, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK 'This unique volume makes complex dynamics of gender and globalization comprehensible. It provides a refreshing and rich analysis of local realities in the local/global nexus. Focusing on gendered agency in heterogeneous spaces and spheres of life across the globe, contributors build a multidimensional picture of globalization. Recommendable reading for everyone who wants to move beyond the paradigm of globalization as linear and top down.' Philomena Essed, Antioch University, USA '...excellent...a valuable contribution to the field...fun to read and throws up all sorts of interesting new questions...' Political Studies Review 'The major strength of this book is that it fills and important gap in the discussion of globalization and gender and provides a new narrative for the interactions between them. The case studies used in this book are very diverse and very clearly support the main argument of the book... This book is an important read for anyone interested in the relationship between gender and globalization. Beyond its focus on gender, the book also helps deconstruct notions of the power relations between the global and the local... Overall this book provides a new and compelling argument about gender, globalization, and development.' Gendered Perspectives on International Development Resource Bulletin