SOAN 318 | Gender, Work, and Globalization

The world is becoming increasingly interconnected, with the movement of people, capital, and cultures across borders transforming lives all over the globe. Yet globalization also shapes, and is shaped by, gender, class, race/ethnicity, age, sexuality, and other axes of difference and inequality. This course examines how gender relations are embedded in practices of globalizing capitalism. Not only does globalization shape the lives of men and women in distinct ways, but the social and economic changes accompanying globalization affect power relations involved in masculine domination. The course examines key developments at the nexus of globalization and gender: the feminization of poverty, feminization of migration, and feminization of workforces which are consistent features of transnational production processes. Besides analyzing the gendered consequences of globalization, including how globalization shapes the lived experiences of women worldwide, it also foregrounds how gendered subjects constitute processes of globalization. Special attention is given to how gender shapes our ideas of what counts as "work," both paid and unpaid, globally, as well as how gender permeates institutions, especially workplaces, but also the government and international organizations.