The Global Construction of Gender - Home-Based Work in the Political Economy of the 20th Century

Erscheinungsjahr 1999
ISBN: 978-0-231-11561-2
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 224 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 340 g

Gender constructions do not stop at state boundaries.

Global understandings of masculinity and femininity can emerge out of the matrix of international politics. Proposing an innovative conception of global politics by de-emphasizing state actors and instead analyzing competing transnational discourses, The Global Construction of Gender focuses specifically on people who work at home for pay. Prügl explores the debates and rhetoric surrounding home-based workers that have taken place in global movements and multilateral organizations since the early 1900s in order to trace changing conceptions of gender over the course of this century.

As Prügl relates, home-based workers, both urban and rural, engage in a broad array of activities: they "sew garments, embroider, make lace, roll cigarettes, weave carpets, peel shrimp, prepare food, polish plastic, process insurance claims, edit manuscripts, and assemble artificial flowers, umbrellas, and jewelry." These (mostly female) workers are widely recognized as underpaid and exploited. In investigating their plight, Prügl describes the rules that have separated home and work and, in the process, created a diverse array of distinctly gendered identities, including that of the working mother as a social problem, the wage-earning worker as a male breadwinner, the crafts-producing woman as the symbol of Third World nationhood, the woman micro-entrepreneur as the heroine of structural adjustment, and the new androgynous home-based consultant/freelancer/teleworker as the exemplary worker of a flexibly organized global economy.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Prügl, Elisabeth

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Arbeitsmarkt
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wirtschaftssoziologie, Arbeitssoziologie, Organisationssoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies: Homosexualität, LGBTQ+
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Wirtschaftspolitik, politische Ökonomie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Feminism, Constructivism, and the Global Politics of Home-Based Work2. Motherly Women--Breadwinning Men: Industrial Homework and the Construction of Western Welfare States3. Supplemental Earners and National Essence: Home-Based Crafts Producers and Nation-Building in Post-Colonial States4. Marginal Survivors or Nurturant Entrepreneurs: Home-Based Work in the Informal Sector5. Fordist Gender Rules at Issue: The Debate over the ILO Convention on Homework6. Fordist Class Categories at Issue: Are Homeworkers Employees or Self-Employed?7. Studying Global PoliticsAppendix: ILO Convention Concerning Home WorkNotesIndex

Über Autor(innen)

Elisabeth Prügl is associate professor of international relations at Florida International University.