Global Women's Work

This volume considers how women are shaping the global economic landscape through their labor, activism, and multiple discourses about work. Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of international scholars, the book offers a gendered examination of work in the global economy and analyses the effects of the 2008 downturn on women's labor force participation and workplace activism. The book addresses three key themes: exploitation versus opportunity; women's agency within the context of changing economic options; and women's negotiations and renegotiations of unpaid social reproductive labor. This uniquely interdisciplinary and comparative analysis will be crucial reading for anyone with an interest in gender and the post-crisis world.

Beth English is Director of the Project on Gender in the Global Community at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Mary E. Frederickson is a Visiting Professor at Emory University in the Rollins School of Public Health, and Professor of History Emerita at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, where she taught from 1988 to 2015. Olga Sanmiguel-Valderrama is an Associate Professor in the Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and the Director of the Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies Program and the Social Justice Certificate at the University of Cincinnati.

Introduction: Perspectives on Gender and Work in the Global Economy Beth English, Mary E. Frederickson, and Olga Sanmiguel-Valderrama Part I. Women's Agency 1. Recognizing the Home Workplace: Making Workers through Global Labor Standards, Eileen Boris 2. Empowerment Revisited: Capitalist Development and Women Workers in China's Reform Era, Xiaodan Zhang 3. Peasant Women's Agency in Bolivia during the Global Recession: The Movement of the Confederación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas Indígenas Originarias y Afrodescendentes de Bartolina Sisa, Anne Marie Ejdesgaard Jeppesen 4. Global Women's Work in Transition: The Case of Entrepreneurial Bolivian Women in apparel production in São Paulo, 2013-2014, Katiuscia Moreno Galhera and João Paulo Candia Veiga 5. Gender Equality in the European Employment Strategy, Gabriella Berloffa, Eleonora Matteazzi, and Paola Villa 6. From Sister to Co-Worker: New Patterns of Feminization of Labor in Turkey, Esra Sarioglu 7. Gender, work, and recession: two views from the United States, Brigid O'Farrell Part II. Exploitation vs. Opportunity 8. Women in the Russian Labor Force: A Retreat from Equality?, Carol Nechemias 9. Working Poor Women in Mexico Facing Another Crisis: Domestic Workers, Struggling with Structural Disadvantages, and the 2008 Recession, Georgina Rojas-García and Mónica Patricia Toledo González 10. Women's Work in Kenya's Athi River Export Processing Zone: Opportunity or Exploitation?, Kelly Pike 11. Women and Trade Liberalization in Egypt, Heba Nasssar 12. Women's University Attainment and Labor Force Participation in Gulf Cooperation Council Countries, Alessandra L. González 13. The Politics of Women and Work in Iran, Valentine M. Moghadam Part III. Negotiations of Social and Reproductive Labor 14. Change and the Status Quo in Home-Based Industry in South Tamil Nadu, India: Women Beedi Workers Confront Shifts in the Organization of Labor and Capital, Meena Gopal 15. Mexican and Puerto Rican Women in Chicago: A Gendered Analysis of the 2008 Recession, Ivis Garcia and Maura I. Toro-Morn 16. The Economic Crisis and Women's Part-Time Work in Hungary, Erika Kispeter 17. Gendered austerity policies: inequality on the rise in the European Union including Ireland, Ursula Barry 18. From Kick-Start to U-Turn? Gender Equality in Sweden, Anita Nyberg