The Gender Ideological Clash in Globalization: Women, Migration, and the Modernization Building Project of the Philippines

Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar

Publication

The Gender Ideological Clash in Globalization: Women, Migration, and the Modernization Building Project of the Philippines

Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar

Abstract

My article interrogates the local impacts of global economic argue that the development of an export-oriented Filipino economy incorporates a gender ideological clash resulting from simultaneously encouraging and discouraging female domesticity. This clash emerges from the economic dependency of the Philippines on women s work outside the home on the one hand, and a longstanding gender ideology that continues to locate women s gender responsibilities inside the home on the other hand. The dependence of the Philippines on remittances from women s migrant domestic work magnifies this clash. My article looks closely at this gender ideological clash caused by working women s paradoxical positioning vis-à-vis the home, addresses why this clash occurs, describes its consequences for relations in the family, and, lastly, links it to a larger discussion of the status of women in globalization.