This is a collection of essays, which generally means you're getting a mixed bag. I didn't go in expecting the most super radical thing ever but I was hoping for a bit more. I guess what I found most disappointing was the focus on white, Western, professional-class women's perspectives — in particular, how they can be nice employers of Third World women. Who gives a shit? Arlie Russell Hochschild's "Love and Gold" begins as an incisive analysis of how caring labour, like natural resources, is ex...

This is a terribly depressing read, simply because it's a terribly depressing subject: white, Western women are able to enjoy their postfeminist equality, but only by (under)paying non-white migrant workers to clean their homes and look after their children. It's a damning, seemingly-unsolvable problem and one that I wanted to know more about. But I really had to force myself to keep reading, because it's a topic that contains such upsetting truths.There are some great articles in the book, but

How do you have a collection that deals with globalized transnational work force and not engage with core and essential topics like capitalism, colonialism/imperialism, state violence, and the border and visa regime? Structural issues are essentially missing from this almost exclusively white, liberal western-centric professional class perspective. I was disgusted by Susan Cheever’s essay ‘The Nanny Dilemma’. That piece is so next level 90’s whitefeminism, I almost gave up. Arlie Russell Hochsch...

I picked this book to read because I thought it was by Barbara Erenreich. Instead it is a collection of essays that is edited by her. (She did actually write ONE of the essays.) I also didn't realize it was just essays, not a contiguous study of women in the global economy. That was a little dissapointing. Just as an essay got interesting, it was over and the next one was boring.But I would like to speak about the second to last essay. It was about Vietnamese (or Korean...I already forgot!) wome...

4.5 stars -An excellent collection of essays focusing on the femininization of the migrant work force, the mass migration of women from South to North, and its global impact. Largely unreported topic but one of huge significance. The essays cover a wide range of topics, from Vietnamese mail-order brides, to migrant domestics and their Taiwanese employers dealing with the notion of filial piety in the modern age, to sexual exploitation of women and girls in Thailand. I am dropping a 1/2 star beca...

This book tries to be pro-woman in it's defense of domestic workers, but ends up being anti-feminist in the double standards and expectations placed on the affluent women who choose to leave the home for higher pay. It is a family decision​ to hire a nanny or a maid, yet the authors repeatedly​ blame the mothers for having someone else raise their children. No mention of the fathers who leave the home. Ehrenreiech and Hochschild use hyperbole to describe the horrors of being a domestic worker an...

The best thing about this book was that it introduced me to contemporary concepts and ideas that I had not thought about when discussing about globalization. To able to see how factors of globalization have changed the dynamics of relationships between women and the society and with other women from different social status. The fact that the book is composed of essays that discuss the about the position of woman in globalization from varying perspectives made the reading interesting. However, I

WOMAN OF THE WORLD I've always got time for the journalist Barbara Ehrenreich's robust writing since I was lent "Nickel and Dimed: Undercover in Low-wage America" a few years back. In this book, published in 2002, Ehrenreich along with Arlie R Hochschild have collected a variety of essays that look at how the situation of woman has changed in the last couple of decades as the world economy has become increasingly globalised.The contributions, as to be expected in collections such as this, vary i...

A full 5 stars.Having read Barbara Ehrenreich her book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America when it was newly published, I knew that she writes from both her mind and her heart. By writing in that way, I can better empathize with her subject.While men also immigrate internationally to find work, Ehrenreich has focused on the women. The women may immigrate legally with temporary documentation. Many stay in the countries that they have immigrated to past and sometimes years past tjeir

Not quite as personal as Nickel and Dimed, this is definitely for the readers who prefer a bit more academia in their reading. Nevertheless, it's filled with interesting stories about the women behind the faces we see on the news and beyond. One thing I really like about Ehrenreich is her ability to tackle the subjects that others hate to notice. Or rather, would like to NOT notice. Poverty? Please, of course people can live off minimum wage! If they can't, they're just lazy or spendthrifts. Wom...

A terribly depressing read made even more depressing by the fact that these are the experiences of women all over the world. These are their lives and they don't have the luxury of putting the book down. Despite that this book is an enlightening read that makes you aware of your own position in the world. It merely scratches the surface of the injustices women experience in their lives all around the world. One of the strengths of the book is the way in which the material is presented. It avoids...

Incredible much-needed look at women, labor and migration in the global economy. Too many 3rd world women are globe-trotting to fill the "care sector" as nannies, housekeepers and prostitutes only to leave a "care void" behind due to strict traditional gender roles that say a woman can't be the provider and a man is not supposed to be the family's source of love and support. This book opened my eyes to some very important work that needs to be done to reconcile the relationship between women in

This collection of essays was quite informative on often hidden or avoided topics, the role of migrant women in the global economy working as household help and as prostitutes-- in essence, taking over the domestic roles that women become too busy, too powerful, or just too disinterested and rich to play in their own household. The essays are mostly academic in tone, but accessible to the lay-reader (except maybe the final one) and tell a compelling story about both globalization and how far we

I read Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide a couple of months ago, and now that I've read this book, I feel incredibly well informed. The last essay I found a bit boring, but the others were all interesting, if occasionally a bit repetitive.

I read this book for a class that I was taking. It was such an interesting read that I decided to keep the book. Depressing that women all over the globe are being suppressed in one form or another but nonetheless its informative and a good read. Thought provoking.

The entire first 2/3rds is so draining to read. It’s all about injustices of migrant nannies, which is fine and what I expected, but it wasn’t composed. Just a hodgepodge of essays and experiences. The book doesn’t any sense of solution, what the world is doing about it, or how injustices affect the big picture. It offers very little historical precedence too as to how and why countries are sending so many migrant workers abroad. I like the idea of the book, but seriously a let down in execution...

Proof that the "sensational" storylines on "Law & Order" are all too true. Deeply disturbing how people can treat each other in the name of making money.

Best book I've read in a very long time. Everybody should read this. It was written almost 20 years ago but is just as relevant today.

A very interesting and important read. A bit dated and some essays are stronger than others but overall very solid

very good book.

From my perspective, the purpose of a collection of essays on any subect is that each essay enlightens a particular side of an issue, until when you're done reading the book you get a global picture. Not so here. There is a lot in this book about wealthy white American women on the one hand, and about struggling South East Asian women on the other, but almost nothing about African, European and Latin American women of all races and classes. There is a lot about domestic workers but little about

This is basically a collection of essays in the supplementary roles woman play which allow the great game of globalization to expand.It starts with the stories of Phillipino women (and it should be noticed that the majority of cases in the book involve exploitation of South East Asians) who are hired by wealthy American working couples to perform the traditional female roles of childrearing, cleaning & cooking (keeping house basically). With the Western woman now fully engaged in the workplace a...

This book discusses how the "Western" woman is helping to oppress woman from third world nations by passing on the domestic work in their homes to those maids and nannies while they "liberate" themselves and go to work everyday. It's an interesting perspective but of course it does not apply to a majority of "Western/American" women. Not all families can afford to have domestic help. Yet, to hear the stories of the women who are being "imported" to support women who seek those careers that make

This book could be an attempt to expand Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickled and Dimed with a feminist angle. Instead, it is a collection of vaguely redundant essays that collectively numb the reader rather than stir them to action.The essays - each by a different author, mind you - cover - as the title implies - women in the global economy. Specifically, women who have become migrant nannies, maids, and sex workers. There is a lot of moving, powerful, and astounding information in this book - human rig...

It's very good. Fifteen writers contribute articles on the migration of third world women to work as first world maids, nannies, and prostitutes-- really interesting stuff. While the topic range is pretty broad, I was very slightly disappointed with the range of voices. After all, what's a feminist compilation without at least one radical, preferably revolting against patriarchal language? I kid, but I have come to appreciate the variety one usually gets from feminist compilations, and I genuine...

Global Woman is a collection of essays on the causes & effects of the migration of women from less developed countries to more developed countries - focusing on the care industry. The authors of the essays interviewed both the women providing the care, as well as the employers (usually women); comparing and contrasting the stories they told. Also included are histories of those left behind; the children and husbands of the migrant women, who sometimes do not return for years. The implications of...

After unsuccessfully starting two novels, I realized that I was in the mood for non-fiction. This is a great collection of essays about women who migrate (voluntarily or involuntarily through sexual slavery) due to modern economic pressures and various other causes linked to globalization. Ehrenreich's essay is a standout, while the loser (not surprisingly for me, since I couldn't stand her when I had her for a class at U of C) is Sassen's closing essay on global cities/migration. A couple of th...

This book has the subtitle: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the new economy and should give the reader a clear picture of the content - a collection of articles/essays mostly written by women on female migrant workers in the era of globalization. Most of them tell stories of women (mainly Hispanic and Filipina) who have left their homes to work in distant countries, severing ties with their children and husbands left behind in their native land. The essays detail their survival in a world of s...

Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy, edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild comprises 15 essays on migrant women workers (four previously published and eleven new ones). Most cases are of migrant women employed by rich white women to ease the "care deficit" in Western nations. Insufficient “men’s work” everywhere, and plenty of “women’s work” to be done in the local, even intimate, settings of wealthy nations, has priced care work out of the reach

A more informational, research-based version of Nickeled and Dimed (the editor's more popular book), with essays by various researchers. Like many similar books, you are left with a bit of a "you can't win" taste - is it better to hire someone in a means that could be exploitative, or to not hire them? Are people taken advantage of more if hired through agencies or individually? Etc. The biggest thing I remember about the book was the irony of economic systems that make it necessary for women to...