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Category: English | Posted By: Alicia | Rating: 
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Question 2: Explain how the mechanisms put into place by the global managers and the social and economic trends that emerge manifest in the everyday lives of women? How is female labor socially constructed to be 'cheap labor'? How does an examination of the gendered division of labor show us that a 'truly global labor force' has emerged?
As seen in the 'Global Care Chain' the most significant impact of the mechanisms put into place by the global managers is the immense debt that has resulted from 1st World lending to 3rd World governments at such outrageous rates that it is literally impossibly to ever pay the debts- both pre-existing and new debts (increased by interest rates of repayment plans) off. As a result, many 3rd World economies are in ruins, with families suffering as a result. Women in these families go out into the workplace in search of a paycheck to bring home to their families, their husbands being either unable to find work or they receive such meager pay that they cannot manage to support their families alone, their children who no longer receive subsidized healthcare or public education, and their extended family who live with them because they have no where else to go. So the women go, they search, and they find that the best-paying jobs are in foreign countries, countries like Italy and the United States, and they gather all they can in order to get there, to find a job, and send as much as they can back to their families. The majority of the jobs available to a woman of their inexperience and status are in domestic work, ironically the same thing they had been doing at home without pay. The trend that has emerged as a result of this dependence on Third World care is termed a 'global heart transplant' as the love of the women from the Third World is transferred to the children of their First World employers. Their own children are thereby deprived of this love, psychological damage that both the mothers and their children experience evident in studies on the issue.
Female labor is constructed to be 'cheap labor' in several ways, as displayed in the 'Global Care Chain.' The majority of the jobs that women- specifically in the Third World- have available to them are low-wage, unskilled, and with high turnover rates. The countless women pushed into the labor force will put up with the conditions and wages, no matter that they are barely scraping by on such scanty pay, because they are still earning money to bring home to their families. The fact that so many women are in the same condition is another factor to take into account, the 'unskilled' nature of their labor, as it is so regarded, making it easy to replace a worker who refuses to or is no longer able to perform her job duties, her replacement often in worse financial condition and accepting of even lower pay. Another explanation for this trend is the fact that in many cases women are better cut out for such jobs, requiring small and nimble hands, keen eyesight, and the ability to perform a single repetitive task for hours on end. In almost all cases the men of the respective societies refuse to fill such jobs, their nature deemed 'unfit' for a man to perform. This coupled with women's urgent need to provide for their family, and these being almost the only job available to them has presented us with the situation we see today. The long-standing tradition of women's contributions being unaccounted for when measuring economic statistics, coupled with the idea of patriarchal superiority that has filled the past of most countries worldwide has also contributed to present conditions, specifically in the Third World.
An examination of the gendered division of labor has shown that women now make up half or very close to half of the global labor force. This is due to the rise of global subcontracting that transformed the division of labor between the skilled labor of the 1st World and the unskilled labor of the 3rd World into a bifurcation of labor worldwide. The division is no longer simply geographical, mainly because of the repetitive effect of global subcontracting bringing pressure to lean on organized workforces in the First World. The separation is of a core of relatively stable, well-paid from a periphery of casual, low-cost labor, wherever. Outsourcing meant cheaper labor and higher profits, becoming a global trend. Factors that pushed many women into entering the workforce include a steadily increasing cost of living, war-torn governments and economies, the debt of their country, reduced government subsidies, and encouragement from these very same governments in the hopes their wages will stimulate the economy.
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Question 1: How did the debt crisis help set the conditions for the Globalization Project and dismantle the Development Project? What are the organizing principles of the Globalization Project and what mechanisms put these principles into practice? What are the goals of the Globalization Project? How does the Globalization Project manage 'globalization from above'? Who are the global managers and what are the new 'rules' of the global economy?
Just as the rise of the development project was politically managed, the demise of the development project was as well. A deregulation of the international financial system was spurred by the U.S., who independently liberalized international financial relations in the early 1970s, the removal of exchange controls designed to protect the political independence and self-government of the states. This marked a change in the balance, presenting a period of increased and uncontrolled capital mobility that was beyond the control of national governments. National finances were destabilized by high rates of speculation, and governments' political and economic authorities were threatened as currency control was lost to their power. This action had a heavy hand in causing the debt crisis, setting the stage for unprecedented borrowing, lending, and spending. The assumption that countries could not go bankrupt was one that was paid for dearly a few short years later.
The decade that was 'lost' to the debt crisis was a period of great transition, with the greatest effects on the nations of the Third World. While the crisis was indeed global, those who suffered most were those in the poorer countries of the world. A majority of the 'positive' development that had occurred, (most often through negative means) was stunted and in actuality set back by the debt crisis. Debt management broke down the countries' political stand, national sovereignty, and divided the 3rd World into several zones, including the severely impoverished regions that some have termed the 'Fourth Word.' After such damage was done, the system of global governance was put into action, embracing the 'whole world,' and not just former colonial countries.
With the globe in an economic crisis, the stage was set for global governance, 'the adoption by nation-states of policies and rules that favor global circuits of money, capital, and goods'. The policies and rules that these nation-states follow were created and dispatched from the global managers, the officials of the multilateral institutions such as the IMF and World bank, G-7 political elites, executives of TNS, and global bankers. The debt regime had taken over the globe, with this form of stand-in global government holding most of the power. Indebted states aimed for only one goal, and that was to raise themselves up in the eyes of the global financial community so that they would be able to earn back credit. While the 1970s began with talk targeting the alleviation of poverty, this talk had shifted to the idea of world market participation being the key to development. The global market and the global economy had consumed the world, with participation in them the strongest driving force worldwide, marking the transition from development to globalization.
In the shifting tensions between development and globalization, states face a world order in which global institutions have assumed a more powerful governing role. The organization of the globalization project was that the superior global managers hand out the rules and policies that the rest of the rule will follow. They are essentially a Global 'President' of sorts, indebted states at their mercy as to debt repayment, rescheduling, and interest rates. The question of compliance is key, with consensus and coercion being the two ways of guaranteeing compliance. Consensus is achieved by government and citizen's acceptance of the legitimacy that market rule neutral and efficient. Coercion results when liberalization is questioned or resisted. Without compliance, the global managers would have no power, but on the same hand the nations that refused would have no means to access the global market, and paying back their debt would be placed in the hands of those they owed, perhaps at much higher interest rates or over shorter periods of time than that which was granted them by the global managers. National economic management was now in the hands of the heads of global governance, and in the same manner the social contract that development states had with their citizens was now null and void. Privatization became the new system under debt managers, a reduction in spending and the privatization of state enterprises. This reorganized development states by privileging the corporate sector and enlarged the area of foreign ownership of assets in the former 3rd world.
As opposed to the trend during the development project of learning from and catching up with the West, the new aim was for a nation to find its place in the global marketplace, doing whatever it took to get there. Specialization replaced replication as the path to economic prosperity, development now measured by one's participation in the world market. The consolidation of a global economy became prominent, no attention paid to the reality that universal formulas for success were simply impossible for former 3rd World countries to achieve. With world market participation deemed the key to development during this period, an attempt was made to fashion the world around a central principle through powerful political and financial institutions. Obviously paying off the immense debts accumulated throughout the 80s was another goal of the globalization project, with extensive lengths gone to: to displace one's debt elsewhere, to repay it through increasing exports and decreasing imports, to privatize state enterprises in the case of development states, but the overwhelming aim remained to participate in the global market.
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