‘Female underside of globalization’

Today, about half of world migrants are women, which is different from the past when labour

migrations and many refugee movements were male dominated. Since the 1960s, there has been a feminization of migration and women have played a major role in most types of migration, including labour migration.

The immigrant women, in their work as :

• nannies
• maids
• nurses
• sex workers and
• ‘imported wives'

Chow (2003: 444) points out that :

The failure to incorporate gender into the study of globalization in meaningful and systematic ways not only produces incomplete views of women’s rights as fundamental human rights and inaccurate understanding of the sources of gender inequality, but also can actually undermine development policy and practice …Therefore, gender matters for understanding what globalization is and how it is influenced by gendered hierarchies and ideologies, which in turn shape gendered institutions, relationships, identities and experiences of women and men.

Since

female labour, including migrant and sexual labour, has become a vital ‘circuit of

survival’ in a number of developing countries, points out that

this has led to ‘feminization of survival’ in the developing world.

Migrant women tend to live isolated and concealed from public view due to their economic and social dependence make they are in greater danger of becoming victims of domestic violence,

sexual abuse and economic exploitation.