"This very interesting collection focuses on the multiple effects of globalization on women and their families. Among its subjects are the rise in female migration, the transfer of domestic services from low to high-income countries, the care crisis left behind by transnational families, and the problems of international sex tourism. The different essays raise key questions and are important reading for our time."

--Lourdes Beneria, Professor of City and Regional Planning and Women's Studies at Cornell University

"Global Woman is an extraordinary and original book documenting the effects of far-flung globalization on that most local, domestic, and essential of pursuits--mothering. The commercialization of domestic activity has been hidden in plain view. The authors of Global Woman make it vividly visible."

--Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect

"Two of the best social thinkers of our time have joined together to produce a volume of deep insight and impeccable scholarship about what it means to be female, poor and ready to move across borders. Long after the advocates of Neoliberalism have been forgotten, this book will live on."

--Patricia Fernández-Kelly, author of For We Are Sold, I and My People

"A series of vivid and devastating portraits of women caught up in the global commodification of women's traditional labor, this collection also illuminates the larger forces driving the transnational traffic in child and elder care, housecleaning, and sex services . . . Global Woman will change the way we think about globalization and about women's caring labor."

--Evelyn Nakano Glenn, author of Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor

"Fifteen instructive essays on the causes and effects of female workers' migration from poor nations to affluent ones. In their introduction, social commentator Ehrenreich and sociologist Hochschild voice the hope that this compilation, to which each has contributed an article, will make visible the female underside of globalization. Third World women leave home by the millions to provide traditionally female services in other countries. There are four major migrational flows: from southeast Asia to the Middle and Far East, from Africa to Europe, from East to West in Europe, and from South to North in the Americas . . . The weightier essays are based on fieldwork, including extensive interviews with migrant domestic workers, and they tackle such issues as the pressures global capitalism puts on women and their families, the ways in which the migration of married women has altered relationships with the husbands and children left behind, and the unbalanced relationships that develop between these workers and their female employers. The most disturbing piece looks at the sex trade in Thailand, where young girls are sold into prostitution and exported to brothels in Japan, Europe, and America . . . An annotated list of activist organizations is appended. For women's study courses, this look at a heretofore largely unexplored phenomenon is sure to provide controversial material."

--Kirkus Reviews

"This important book should find a place for itself among scholars of globalization, migration studies, and women's studies . . . The current discourse on globalization, according to the authors, has little to say about the 'migration of maids, nannies, nurses, sex workers, and contract brides,' since, to most economists, these women 'are just individuals making a go of it.' The positive effects of their labor are sometimes noted: the money they remit to home countries is a major source of foreign exchange, and the work they do in the host country enables a large pool of upwardly mobile First World women to pursue productive careers. The negative consequences, which can include emotional hardships caused by leaving children behind as well as physical strains, are rarely acknowledged. Social critics Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) and Hochschild (The Time Bind) point out that in previous centuries the developed world imported natural resources, and now the import du jour is women, ideally, 'happy peasant' women who can care for the elderly and disabled, lovingly raise children and provide sexual services for men. The editors have gathered some 15 essays on aspects of 'the female underside of globalization'--e.g., Filipina housekeepers in Hong Kong, Latina domestic workers in Los Angeles, sexual slaves in Thailand, Vietnamese contract brides--mostly written by academics working in the field, but largely jargon-free. While one small book can't say everything about a major global phenomenon, Ehrenreich and Hochschild have at least brought attention to these women's plight."

--Publishers Weekly

Henry Holt and Company Web Site, Feb., 2003

In a remarkable pairing, two renowned social critics offer a groundbreaking anthology that examines the unexplored consequences of globalization on the lives of women worldwide

Women are moving around the globe as never before. But for every female executive racking up frequent flier miles, there are multitudes of women whose journeys go unnoticed. Each year, millions leave Mexico, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and other third world countries to work in the homes, nurseries, and brothels of the first world. This broad-scale transfer of labor associated with women's traditional roles results in an odd displacement. In the new global calculus, the female energy that flows to wealthy countries is subtracted from poor ones, often to the detriment of the families left behind. The migrant nanny--or cleaning woman, nursing care attendant, maid--eases a "care deficit" in rich countries, while her absence creates a "care deficit" back home.

Confronting a range of topics, from the fate of Vietnamese mail-order brides to the importation of Mexican nannies in Los Angeles and the selling of Thai girls to Japanese brothels, Global Woman offers an unprecedented look at a world shaped by mass migration and economic exchange on an ever-increasing scale. In fifteen vivid essays-- of which only four have been previously published-- by a diverse and distinguished group of writers, collected and introduced by bestselling authors Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, this important anthology reveals a new era in which the main resource extracted from the third world is no longer gold or silver, but love.

Introduction by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild

Love and Gold by Arlie Russell Hochschild

The Nanny Dilemma by Susan Cheever

The Care Crisis in the Philippines: Children and Transnational Families in the New Global Economy by Rhacel Salazar Parreñas

Blowups and Other Unhappy Endings by Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo

Invisible Labors: Caring for the Independent Person by Lynn May Rivas

Maid to Order by Barbara Ehrenreich

Just Another Job? The Commodification of Domestic Labor by Bridget Anderson

Filipina Workers in Hong Kong Homes: Household Rules and Relations by Nicole Constable

America's Dirty Work: Migrant Maids and Modern-Day Slavery by Joy M. Zarembka

Selling Sex for Visas: Sex Tourism as a Stepping Stone to International Migration by Denise Brennan

Among Women: Migrant Domestics and Their Taiwanese Employers Across Generations by Pei-Chia Lan

Breadwinner No More by Michele Gamburd

Because She Looks like a Child by Kevin Bales

Clashing Dreams: Highly Educated Overseas Brides and Low-Wage U.S. Husbands by Hung Cam Thai

Global Cities and Survival Circuits by Saskia Sassen

Migration Trends: Maps and Chart by Robert Espinoza

Appendix: Activist Organizations

Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
The Contributors