Globalisation and Gender

Structures and Objectives of the Lecture

• Understand how processes of social and economic change are impacting on how we define Masculinity and Femininity

• To analyse the changing political economy of reproduction of reproduction and production (to link these processes)

Section One: Construction of Gender

Section Two: Reconstruction of Reproductive Economy

Section Three: ‘Productive Economy’

Construction of Gender

• One is not born a woman, one becomes one.

The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir

Beauviour argues that throughout history women constructed as deviant other

• It seems fairly uncontroversial to argue that idea of being male or female has little meaning outside social context

• Within contemporary capitalism main institutions shaping meanings market (consumption), family and the religion (or its legacies)

• In so far globalisation affects these institutions it cannot but effect perceptions of gender

• Consumption: From the cradle to grave patterns of consumption are gendered.

• Colours of Children's Clothes: Pink and Blue

• Young Children's Toys: Guns, Action Man, Engineering.

• Dolls ect

• Older Children: Early Teen Magazines, Fashion

• Football, Gadgets, Pornography

• Adults: Friends, Sex in the City, Shoes etc

• Cars, Gadgets etc

• Through these acts of consumption we affirm our gender. These acts simultaneously tell us how to be a ‘good’ man/ women.

• Through these acts of consumption we affirm our gender. These acts simultaneously tell us how to be a ‘good’ man/ women.

• Globalisation is important not because it creates gendered patterns/norms of consumption but because it changes how these patterns and norms are formed.

• Historically different notions of gender articulated in different milieu

• Global (ised) cultural production sees concentration of processes of definition in certain key sites of production.

• Global media industries create globalized norms of femininity and masculinity.

• My example of what

it means to be male

when I was Frank

White (who also made

a big impression on

Biggie)

• Family: I think important in context of globalisation is decline in nuclear family (which I shall return to the second section)

• Religion: Even in post-religious societies. Moral codes derived from religions which prosobed gender roles

• Equally significant revival of radical religion in context of revival of the politics of being

The Reproductive Economy

• 1995: Non-market work value was $15 trillion ($11 trillion women’s labour)

• Peterson argues that global capitalism can only function because of subventions from non-capitalist sector (allegory with world systems theory)

• Constant struggle to define to privatise and socialise costs and sexual division of labour within the reproductive economy (university fees represent a privatisation of costs)

• Globalisation undermining primarily unit of Fordist reproductive economy. The Nuclear Family.

• Marriages per annum declined by roughly 50% between 1972 and 2005

• 1 in 4 children are in lone parent families

• 60% British adults are part of a couple 40% are not.

• Crisis in mode of regulating sexual relationships and reproductive economy

• My argument is ‘love’ as a regulatory mechanisms is in crisis

• I define ‘love’ as the idea that possible to spend life with first person due in part to emotional commitments.

• Product of a particular set of material circumstances that no longer exist (Fordism)

• The new regime of accumulation is incommensurate with permanence (the image, flexible accumulation, consistent change). Physical movement!

• Love is a destructive concept

(1) Always been gendered (dark side)

(2) More problematic now because it retains value as a regulatory ideal but it is a ideal without material supports

• We in a interregnum. Hopefully, a new regime of regulation develops that stresses realism and gender equality.

• The crisis of love linked to a crisis in fertility(1.7 UK). Also contradictory demands of capital!

• Difficult to generalise regarding the impact of changes in reproductive economy on gender division of labour (although rise in one parent family suggest exploitation of women getting more intense)

• It seems likely functions of reproduction increasing be put in state/ market sectors (see next section).

• Also immigrant replaces reproduction in the core capitalist area!

Productive Economy

• Many key ‘globalising industries’ are highly feminised.

• Tourism!• Female dominated employment. Also

selling country through images of national Femininity.

• Source of National Competitiveness!• Tourism and also sex industry

• Gender played a key role in global restructuring

• Third World “Factory Girl”• Construction of Norms of Productive Female

(Combine specific ideas of race, Femininity, Global capital, Class): Docile, Capable of Competitive Work, Nimble.

• Norms limit progress for key females

• Transformation from Fordism to Post-Fordism structured by pre-existing social structures.

• Leading to increasing diversity in the economic experience of gender

• Elite women and ‘poor women’

• Elite women may enjoy similar experience to men because capacity to transfer reproduction costs in poor (often foreign employees). Transfer of activities from household to the market

• Although professional women tend to be disproportional affected by state restructuring (as concentrated in the state sector. USSR women doctors)

• Poor Women: Skills frequently devalued as ‘natural’. Bottom of the Post-Fordist pile.

• Also disproportionally effected by ‘informalisation’

Conclusion

• Globalisation is effecting how we define ourselves as Men and Women

• It is also reshaping gender division of labour (although in this it builds upon existing social understandings)

• Gender constructs are critical to whole process of restructuring

• No real value in arguing globalisation is good/bad for men/women as this ignores other social divisions and diversity of experiences.