Woman and Globalization

As globalization breaks down economic inequalities there is hope that it will also destroy gender lines “by eliminating barriers and expanding opportunities,”  said Deborah Gonzalez.

             “A lot of women are doing a lot of the work without getting the economic benefits to help the family,” Gonzales  said in a Friday presentation sponsored by International Public Service and Outreach.  Yet, “the burden of feeding for the family often falls on the women.”

            Still, globalization can provide an opening for women around the world so that they can increase their importance and self-esteem.

“By exposing cultures to other cultures, women get a sense of what is happening to women elsewhere and can use them as a model to increase their own position,” Gonzalez  said in her talk titled “Princesses of the Pyre:  Globalization and its Impact on Women in Developing Countries.”

Emily Corbin, a freshman from Augusta, said after the talk, “Regardless of where they live, I’m connected to all the women in the world.”

However, many women are still caught in systems that deny them any rights and often put them in situations of violence and rape.

Gonzalez said, “Women become no longer human.  They don’t become the sisters, mothers, and wives.  They become objects.  They become war loot.”

Violence is not the only problem.  Women are often “left to fend for themselves” as their husbands leave to find work in other countries, she continued.  They face the “son preference,” an idea in many cultures that the sons should be educated and receive opportunities, as opposed to the daughters, who stay at home.

Even women who overcome the odds to gain an education do not always have the chance to use it.

Gonzalez gave the example of Rowena Bautista, an immigrant from the Philippines, who has several years of engineering training, but works as a nanny to send back to her children $450 of the $750 she makes each month.  Bautista’s husband works in Korea and she has not seen her children for several years because they live with their grandmother.  Yet, the money she makes is much more than she could earn in the Philippines, and so she stays.

“Half the world’s migrant are women and of those women, the majority are mothers who leave their children,” said Gonzalez.

Gonzalez ended her talk with an encouragement to gain “exposure to different perspectives” by becoming more aware of international news, and thereby more prepared to fix the problems that face the world.

 “[This talk] pointed out how lucky we are being women in America,” said Vanessa Vina, a freshman from Snellville.  “Just being here means we have a better start.”