The Gender Question in Globalization

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.

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.

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.