The process of globalization has had a dramatic impact on the lives of women in developing countries in the past decade. They have been increasingly drawn into insecure flexible employment working for the world market. The feminisation of the labour market has increased the burdens on women, and the inability of men to access full-time well-remunerated employment has exacerbated the process of male out-migration and has left many families headed by women. At the same time the reduction in state services and welfare has increased the burdens placed on women. Nevertheless the consequences of globalization have been different for different women in different places. In some circumstances it has created opportunities for greater empowerment, whilst in others it has stimulated a reaction and increased the subordination of women. This book explores the experiences of women in diverse local contexts within different cultures and faiths, drawing on case studies from Asia, Africa and Latin America. It draws out the contradictory and fragmented impact of globalization at the local level on the lives of women in the developing world.

Delia D. Aguilar and Anne E. Lacsamana have assembled a collection of articles showing the various ways in which the neoliberal agenda of globalization has drawn women into productive labor and in the process radically reshaped their lives in the reproductive sphere. Implemented primarily through the structural adjustment programs required by international financial agencies, neoliberalism has intensified women's exploitation on the assembly line and spawned an unprecedented diaspora of women as mail-order brides, domestic helpers, and workers in the sex trade. Many of the essays describe the appalling conditions that characterize these work sites. Not less important, they underscore the vitality of grassroots organizations where women collectively wage battles for better work lives and envision a system more humane than what currently exists.

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.

This volume analyses approaches to economic and political change and propose ways of ensuring that ideas are translated into concrete actions. The aim is to re-politicise the gender and development community with a solutions-oriented approach which looks at globalisation through women's eyes, and finds energising ideas.

This book explores the impact of neoliberal globalization on labour markets and the state in the developed and developing world. It focuses especially on the United States and the economies of Asia – in particular, India. Liberalized trade and investment are thought by neoliberals to be the best levers for raising labour standards, provided labour market flexibility and capital market restructuring accompany them. Labour market flexibility and capital market restructuring, at a first glance, appear to be complementary and symmetric policies. In practice, however, they might have very asymmetric consequences. This book addresses these issues, and it presents a comprehensive analysis of the key questions such as: How far is globalization a ‘real’ threat to the conventional systems of wage fixation, employment pattern, and basic rights at work in both developed, as well as underdeveloped countries? Are casualization and informalization of the workforce direct outcomes of deregulation? How do labour organizations cope with the volatility of the labour market? Are the existing labour market conditions and forms of labour organizations misfits in the globalized business world? Is it at all feasible to choose a high road that combines some degree of labour market flexibility with better labour standards? This book will be of interest to academics working on International Development, Development Economics, Political Economy, Comparative Labour Studies and Asian Studies.