Gender and Globalization

Dr. Carl DavilaThe College at Brockport

Who gets to call the shots…?

S.U.N.Y. Global Workforce Project

" [W]omen attest the identity and value of someone or something else, and the beholder's reaction is necessary to complete their meaning ... Meanings of all kinds flow

though the figures of women, and they often do not include who she herself is. "

~ Marina Warner, Monuments and Maidens (New York: Atheneum, 1985: 331)

France in Algeria

http://z.about.com/d/africanhistory/1/0/1/L/Atlas-Algeria.jpg

"In 1960, I was doing my military service in Algeria. The French army had decided that the indigenous peoples were to have a French identity card. I was asked to photograph all the people in the surrounding villages. I took photographs of nearly two thousand persons, the majority of whom were women, at a rate of about two hundred a day. The faces of the women moved me greatly. They had no choice. They were required to unveil themselves and let themselves be photographed. They had to sit on a stool, outdoors, before a white wall. I was struck by their pointblank stares, first witness to their mute, violent protest." ~ Marc Garanger, Femmes algériennes 1960 (Anglet, France, 2002)

Source: Walls of Algiers blog at the Algeria Channel — http://www.algeria.com/forums/history-histoire/24870-walls-algiers-narratives-city-through-text-image.html

Selections from Malek Alloula’s The Colonial Harem*

*trans. Myrna Godzich and Wlad Godzich, Unversity of Minnesota Press, 1986

The Phases of Globalization

Phase I: ColonialismBritain and France

and to a lesser extent Spain, Portugal and Belgium.

In many cases, this economic power showed itself in:

☞ Cultural domination of the colonized (the “civilizing mission”)

☞ The sexualizing of the female cultural Other

The Phases of Globalization

So, the colonial system of the 19th and 20th centuries

involved:Power over the lives of women

the power to make images, to represent, to create economic

necessity, to employ.

The effort to influence local customs and gender roles

The Phases of Globalization

Phase II: Neo-Colonialism

Definition: Ongoing domination of developing countries through economic manipulation, international arrangements on behalf of corporate interests, debt creation, and so on.

A phenomenon deeply woven into modern economic globalization:

The Phases of Globalization

Phase II: Neo-Colonialism

The goal of “Economic liberalization”: freeing of capital for the purpose of generating profits.

Thus capital travels all over the world, bringing distant lands into contact.

But the profits mainly flow away from the poor in countries that provide the labor and resources that generate them...

And toward the elites, corporations and governents that stand most to benefit.

The Phases of GlobalizationPhase II: Neo-Colonialism

In such a system, “everything is a product” and “everyone is a consumer”

But often, the personal services of women in the developing world become “products” to be consumed.

A key transformation since Phase I: Migration

•The economic pull of the wealthy, developed nations has led to a level of economic migration never

seen in history.• Former colonial subjects are moving (legally and otherwise) to the former colonial power for work.• Including women migrating in connection with the sex-trade industry.

Gender and Globalization

Dr. Carl DavilaThe College at Brockport

Sex-Industry MigrationRole Scenarios I and II

S.U.N.Y. Global Workforce Project

Scenario I:You are a sex-worker in Sosúa

Questions

Q 1: What has brought you into the sex trade?

Q 2: Do you like it?

Q 3: What would you do — what lengths would you go to — to “catch” a foreign tourist who might be willing

to support you, or even take you away to his home country?

Q 4: Will you be happy or sad about making a successful connection like this?

Scenario II:You are a (male) sex-tourist in Sosúa

Questions

Q 1: What conditions (cultural, social, economic) enable you to patronize the sex industry in Sosua?

Q 2: What would motivate you to consider taking on one of these women in a permanent relationship? What are the advantages for you?

Q 3: Do you feel that you are exploiting this woman? Or is the balance of power more equal in your eyes?