Abstract
The marginalization of women worldwide is common knowledge. Such marginalization is so prevalent that it has created women’s movements and spawned critical concepts such as patriarchy and sexism. Today, the struggle for gender equality lives on1 as improvements in the life and role of women in society, especially in the past few decades, continue to trickle. Globalization has paved the way, for example, for a worldwide increase in the participation of women in the labor force. In particular, the globalization of labor flows, growth of global cities, and patterns of corporate restructuring have not only increased mobility at the high and low ends of the job market for women. They have also provided women increased access to wages and salaries at both the upper and lower ends of the market as well as increased prominence as both visible power-brokers and significant consumers within the global economy. Ann Brooks points out, however, that important questions emerge, as well, for gender analysis and for patterns of inequality as a result of globalization2 because of the gender and digital divide it brings. In particular, Brooks maintains globalization has led not only to the growing differentiation within the division of labor between and within gender frameworks but also to the growing “feminization” of job supply and of business opportunities.3
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Notes
The work of Sasskia Sassen, particularly Globalization and Its Discontents, is often considered critical in this field. In that book, Sassen analyzes the relationship between globalization, gender, and social change in general and the relationship between the globalization of labor flows and the new dynamics of inequality in particular. Sassen’s work shows not only how mainstream accounts of globalization focus on abstract economic dynamics and proceed as if those dynamics are inevitably gender neutral but also how to contribute to a feminist analytics that allows for the re-reading and reconceptualization of major features of today’s global economy in a manner that captures strategic instantiations of gendering as well as formal and operational openings that make women visible and lead to greater presence and participation. Sasskia Sassen, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 82.
Ann Brooks, Gendered Work in Asian Cities: The New Economy and Changing Labour Markets (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2006), 2–3.
See Pamela Brubaker, “Reforming Global Economic Policies,” in Justice in a Global Economy: Strategies for Home, Community and World, ed. Pamela K. Brubaker, Rebecca Todd Peters and Laura A. Stivers (Louisville, KY: WJK Press, 2006): 127–128.
Maria Arcelia Gonzales-Butron, “The Effects of Free-market Globalization on Women’s Lives,” in Globalization and its Victims, ed. Jon Sobrino and Felix Wilfred, Concilium 2001/5 (London: SCM Press), 44–45.
But the jobs generated by migration, like most female jobs, are also undermined by economic recession since women’s quality of employment often suffers first in times of economic restructuring and flexibility. As a UN study says, women generally continue to be the last to benefit from job expansion and the first to suffer from job contraction. See Valentine M. Moghadam, “Gender Aspects of Employment and Unemployment in a Global Perspective,” in Global Employment: An International Investigation into the Future of Work, ed. Mihaly Simai, Valentine M. Moghadam, and Arvo Kuddo (London and Tokyo: Zed Books and UNU Press, 1995), 111.
“Gender” as an analytical category largely informs this chapter, so a clarification of the term is in order here. The study of gender looks at social roles based on biological sex. It assumes that sex is a given but gender is socially constructed. Thus, gender theorists consider the roles of men and women in the light of other categories of power and difference. This also means that the dynamics of race and class, and the manner in which they intersect with gender relations, inform much of the critical study of gender. Elaine Graham, “Gender,” in An A–Z of Feminist Theology, ed. Lisa Isherwood and Dorothea McEwan (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996): 78.
See Mirjana Morokvasic, “Birds of Passage Are Also Women,” International Migration Review Vol. 18, No. 4 (Winter 1984): 886–907.
This is buttressed by a UN report that states that women account for 49 percent of all international migrants. Women even predominate (57 percent) among older international migrants, particularly those aged 65 or above. See United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “International Migrants by Age,” Population Facts No. 2010/6 <http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/popfacts/popfacts_2010–6.pdf> accessed September 23, 2012.
Amy Sim, “Introduction: Women, Mobilities, Immobilities, and Empowerment,” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal Vol. 18, No. 1 (2009): 4.
Nikos Papastergiadis, The Turbulence of Migration: Globalization, Deterritorialization, and Hybridity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 10.
See Ebonne Ruffins, “Rescuing Girls from Sex Slavery,” <http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/04/29/cnnheroes.koirala.nepal/index.html> accessed August 30, 2012.
Gustavo Capdevilla, “IOM Report: Filipinas, Russians trafficked for US military bases in Korea,” OFW Journalism Consortium Eleventh News Packet (November 13, 2002): 15. For a more global perspective on the forced migration of women, see Sharon Pickering, Women, Borders and Violence: Current Issues in Asylum, Forced Migration and Trafficking (New York: Springer, 2010).
Today, health care is quickly developing into a major employment sector for women migrants. This is not surprising given the care-based nature of jobs in health care. The United Kingdom, for example, suffers an estimated shortfall of 20,000 nurses annually; the United States 200,000. Rita Monteiro, “Global Mom: Migrant Mom,” <http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/globalpers/gp050703.htm> accessed August 19, 2012.
Amy Sim, “Women Versus the State: Organizing Resistance and Contesting Exploitation in Indonesian Labor Migration to Hong Kong,” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal Vol. 18, No. 1 (2009): 55–56.
Keiko Osaki, “Economic Interactions of Migrants and their Household of Origin: Are Women More Reliable Supporters,” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal Vol. 8, No. 4 (1999): 447–471.
See Deidre McKay, “Filipinas in Canada: Deskilling as a Push toward Marriage,” in Wife or Worker: Asian Women and Migration, ed. Nicola Piper and Mina Roces (Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003): 23–52. See also Tomoku Nakamatsu, “International Marriage though Introduction Agencies: Social and Legal Realities of ‘Asian’ Wives of Japanese Men,” in Wife or Worker, 181–202.
See Maruja M.B. Asis, “Caring for the World: Filipino Domestic Workers Gone Global,” in Asian Women as Transnational Domestic Workers, ed. Shirlena Huang, Brenda S. Yeoh and Noor Abdul Rahman (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2005): 21–53;
Deirdre McKay, “Success Stories?: Filipina Migrant Domestic Workers in Canada,” in Asian Women as Transnational Domestic Workers, ed. Shirlena Huang, Brenda S. Yeoh and Noor Abdul Rahman (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2005): 305–340 and;
Nobue Suzuki, “Gendered Surveillance and Sexual Violence in Filipino Pre-migration Experiences to Japan,” in Gender Politics in the Asia Pacific Region, ed. Brenda S. Yeoh, P. Teo and S. Huang (London and New York: Routledge, 2002): 99–116.
See Ninna Nyberg Sorensen and Luis Guarnizo, “Transnational Family Life Across the Atlantic: The Experience of Colombian and Dominican Migrants in Europe,” in Living Across Worlds: Diaspora, Development and Transnational Engagement, ed. Ninna Nyberg Sorensen (Geneva: IOM, 2008): 151–176.
The case of the “picture brides” or migrant wives selected via matchmakers by immigrant workers (primarily from Japan and Korea) in Hawaii and the West Coast in the early twentieth century illustrates this. The women were known as “picture brides” as the immigrant men choose a bride from their native countries through photographs. While some of the women did it out of obligation to their families, most did it for economic mobility while others did it to gain freedoms denied to them in Japan or Korea and to escape familial duties, particularly filial piety that comes with traditional marriage. See Kei Tanaka, “Japanese Picture Marriage and the Image of Immigrant Women in Early Twentieth-century California,” The Japanese Journal of American Studies No. 15 (2004): 115–138. See also Alice Yun Chai, “Women’s History in Public: ‘picture brides’ of Hawaii,” Women’s Studies Quarterly, Vol. 16, Nos. 1–2 (Spring–Summer 1988): 51–62.
I have discussed this elsewhere. See Gemma Tulud Cruz, An Intercultural Theology of Migration: Pilgrims in the Wilderness (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 39–40. Various factors account for the difficulty to find a potential good boyfriend or husband. These include the women’s race or ethnicity, occupation, and, sometimes, the migration profile of the women’s racial or ethnic group. The Filipino women domestic workers in Hong Kong illustrate this. Because Filipino migrants in Hong Kong are predominantly women and they are domestic workers, the chances of finding a Filipino man or a man who will see beyond a potential subservient wife and a maid or homemaker are diminished.
It turns out that one of the reasons why the wife refuses to come home is that Nestor is a jobless, lazy, and, most of all, abusive husband. See Susan K., “More Gripes from Husbands of OFWs,” <http://globalnation.inquirer.net/27225/more-gripes-from-husbands-of-ofws> accessed August 4, 2012.
Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ernestine Avila, “‘I’m Here, But I’m There’: The Meaning of Latina Transnational Motherhood,” Gender and Society Vol. 11, No. 5 (1997): 562.
Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, “The Gender Paradox in the Transnational Families of Filipino Migrant Women,” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal Vol. 14, No. 3 (2005): 256.
Parreñas “The Gender Paradox in the Transnational Families of Filipino Migrant Women,” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal Vol. 14, No. 3 (2005): 256–257.
A more vivid description of the need or pressure to do transnational mothering is outlined in Patricia Ringen, “Parenting Tips for Overseas Working Moms,” <http://globalnation.inquirer.net/11589/parenting-tips-for-overseas-working-moms> accessed October 19, 2012.
See, for example, E. Mulong, “Mothers Once Again” TNT Hong Kong Vol. 6, No. 4 (June–July 2000): 4–5 and “When Children Become Parent Carers,” TNT Hong Kong Vol. 7, No. 1 (February–March 2001): 9.
Maia Jachimowicz and Deborah W. Meyers, “Executive Summary,” in Women Immigrants in the United States Conference Proceedings, ed. Philippa Strum and Danielle Tarantolo (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2002): 1–6.
Kathleen Valtonen, “East Meets North: The Finnish-Vietnamese Community,” Asian and Pacific Migration Review Vol. 5, No. 4 (1996): 481–482. Valtonen also makes a good point about the growing literature as to whether migration leads to a loss or gain in the status of women as a result of changes in the distribution of power within the family. She contends that the answers vary according to the immigrant context and cultural background. She elaborates by saying that in some situations new economics and social responsibilities have been the basis of a woman’s increasing importance within the family. In other cases, in the meantime, the woman’s role in the family has been undermined, especially for nonworking women, isolated from an extended family network, who find themselves dependent on their children.
Yaghoob Foroutan, “Migration and Gender Roles: The Typical Work Pattern of the MENA Women,” International Migration Review Vol. 43, No. 4 (Winter 2009): 987. Tanu Priya Uteng also challenges the idea of home/host dichotomy, which states that the home country equals oppression and the host country equals freedom for immigrant women. In Uteng’s case, however, she highlights the disadvantage and discrimination angle between immigrant women and Western women.
See Tanu Priya Uteng, “Gendered Mobility: A Case Study of Non-Western Immigrant Women in Norway,” in Ethics of Mobilities, ed. Sigurd Bergmann and Tore Sager (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2008): 73–101, esp.98.
See Helen Rose Ebaugh and Janet Saltzman Chafetz, Religion and the New Immigrants: Continuities and Adaptations in Immigrant Congregations (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2000), especially Chapters 4, 6, and 8.
Binaifer Nowrojee, “Sexual Violence, Gender Roles and Displacement” in Refugee Rights: Ethics, Advocacy, and Africa, ed. David Hollenbach (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2008): 126.
See Amnesty International, “Refugee Women in Chad Face High Levels of Rape Despite UN Presence,” <http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4ac483011e.html> accessed August 30, 2012.
A picture of the global extent of the problem is sketched in Elizabeth Stannard Gromisch, “Refugees and the Risk of Rape,” <http://www.thewip.net/contributors/2009/07/refugees_and_the_risk_of_rape.html> accessed August 28, 2012.
Tenaganita, The Revolving Door: Modern Day Slavery Refugees (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Tenaganita, 2008), 58–59.
See Daffyd Roderick, “Making the Poor Even Poorer,” <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,189810,00.html> accessed August 28, 2012.
See related report: “Maternity Benefits for Maids Opposed” Philippine Daily Inquirer (July 4, 1997): 3; Nicole Constable, Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Filipina Workers (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 72, cites a similar violation of the domestic workers’ reproductive right whereby the domestic worker was given an abortion without her knowledge when her employer brought her for physical exam and pregnancy test.
Permanent residency status will make a big difference in these women’s lives as it will grant them additional rights and access to government services. Evangeline Vallejos, the maid who took the HK government to court on the issue, initially won the legal battle when the High Court ruled in her favor. The Court of Appeals overturned the decision and Vallejos appealed the decision in Hong Kong’s Final Court of Appeal but she lost. See Simon Lee and Fox Hu, “Hong Kong Maids Lose Final Appeal for Residence Rights,” <http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013–03–25/hong-kong-court-rejects-residency-appeal-by-domestic-helper.html> accessed August 20, 2013.
James Tyner, “The Web-Based Recruitment of Female Foreign Domestic Workers in Asia,” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography Vol. 20, No. 2 (1999): 199–201. Some agencies in Tyner’s research include information on marital status and family size on the assumption that women who have children are more experienced and a family life could mean that the applicant is less likely to party or seek a “social life” in the host country. Women who are impoverished or have significant family responsibilities are also presented as more willing to put in long hours.
Lisa Sowle Cahill, “Justice, Gender, and the Market,” in Outside the Market No Salvation, ed. Dietmar Mieth and Marciano Vidal, Concilium 1997/2 (London: SCM Press): 133–142.
Monteiro, “Global Mom: Migrant Mom,” <http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/globalpers/gp050703.htm> accessed August 19, 2012.
Elisabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza, “The Endless Day: Introduction,” in Women, Work, and Poverty, ed. Elisabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza and Anne Carr, Concilium 194 (London: SCM Press, 1987): xviii–xix.
Elina Vuola, Limits of Liberation: Feminist Theology and the Ethics of Poverty and Reproduction (New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002) gives an eloquent critique on this.
Maria Pilar Aquino, “The Feminist Option for Poor and Oppressed in the Context of Globalization,” in The Option for the Poor in Christian Theology, ed. Daniel Groody (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007): 191–215. See also Mary Catherine Hilkert, “The Option for the Poor in the Context of Globalization: A Feminist Vision,” in The Option for the Poor in Christian Theology, 228–237.
Monteiro, “Global Mom: Migrant Mom,” <http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/globalpers/gp050703.htm> accessed August 19, 2012.
W. Anne Joh, “Relating to Household Labor Justly,” in Justice in a Global Economy: Strategies for Home, Community and the World, ed. Pamela K. Brubaker, Rebecca Todd Peters and Laura Stivers (Louisville, KY: 2006): 29–39.
For a general discussion on the areas of productive and reproductive work, see Carol S. Robb, “Principles for a Woman-Friendly Economy,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion Vol. 9, Nos. 1–2 (Spring/Fall 1993): 147–160.
Margaret Farley, Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics (New York: Continuum, 2010).
Isabel Carter Heyward, The Redemption of God: A Theology of Mutual Relation (New York: University Press of America, 1982), 18.
It is nearly always classified along masculine and feminine lines, often formulated as a “nuptial hermeneutics” (in terms of bridegroom and bride) and in terms of an “ontological complementarity” whereby men and women, though fundamentally equal and complete in themselves, are incomplete as a couple. Todd Salzmann and Michael Lawler, “Catholic Sexual Ethics: Complementarity and the Truly Human,” Theological Studies Vol. 67, No. 3 (September 2006): 627–628.
See, for example, Carter Heyward, The Redemption of God: A Theology of Mutual Relation; Lisa Isherwood and Dorothea McEwan, Introducing Feminist Theology (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001); and
Rosemary Radford Ruether and Eugene Bianchi, From Machismo to Mutuality: Essays on Sexism and Woman-Man Liberation (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1976).
Brenda S.A. Yeoh, Elspeth Graham, and Paul J. Boyle, “Migrations and Family Relations in the Asia-Pacific Region,” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal Vol. 11, No. 1 (2002): 1.
For purposes of a clearer and more manageable focus, this section will primarily tackle the transnational family, particularly with women-away transnational families. This is to also align the current section with the previous one, which dealt primarily with situations where it is only the female member, especially the mother, who is away. For specific theological reflections on immigrant families, see Elizabeth Conde Frazier, Listen to the Children: Conversations with Immigrant Families (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2011);
Jin Sook Kwon, Contemplating Connection: A Feminist Pastoral Theology of Connection for Korean Christian Immigrant Parent-Child Relationships, unpublished PhD dissertation, Claremont School of Theology, September 2011.
Michelle Gamburd, The Kitchen Spoon’s Handle: Transnationalism and Sri Lanka’s Migrant Housemaids (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 241.
Episcopal Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, Migration 2002: Situationer and Impact, Biblical Inspiration, Pastoral Challenges (Manila, Philippines: ECMI-CBCP, 2002): 19, 21–23, offers a glimpse of the maintenance of patriarchal practices and expectations by saying that when the wife migrates the husband is less responsible at home, freer to yield to temptations of gambling or womanizing, and may relegate the children’s education task to relatives/others. The authors also argue that when it comes to children’s social development, the absence of the mother is felt more than that of fathers and that children whose mothers are abroad receive less awards in school.
Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, “The Gender Paradox in the Transnational Families of Filipino Migrant Women,” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal Vol. 14, No. 3 (2005): 244.
Among Filipino migrant workers, for example, there is a phenomenon called BSA or Biyuda/Biyudo Sa Abroad (Widow/Widower When Abroad). What happens is that when married migrants become attracted to someone overseas, instead of introducing themselves as single or unmarried (probably because they do not look the part), they introduce themselves as biyudo (widower) and biyuda (widow) even when the spouse is very much alive. See cases on this phenomenon as it plays out in Taiwan in Susan K. “The Tragic Sagas of BSAs in Taiwan,” <http://globalnation.inquirer.net/25033/the-tragic-sagas-of-bsas-in-taiwan> accessed February 5, 2012.
See, for example, Susan K., “On OFW Family Problems: Readers Talk Back,” <http://globalnation.inquirer.net/27831/on-ofw-family-problems-readers-talk-back> accessed August 11, 2012. It is doubly hard for the children, especially for those who were born to migrant parents not recognized in host countries. This phenomenon of “stateless children” is noticeable, for example, in the Middle East, where there are as many as 6,000 stateless children.
Jerome Aning, “Filipino Woman Runs for Seat in South Korean Parliament,” <http://globalnation.inquirer.net/31289/filipino-woman-runs-for-seat-on-south-korean-parliament> accessed August 1, 2012.
The challenges posed by migration to the family is the subject of an essay by Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, former secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People. See Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, “The Migrant Family: Challenges Today and the Way Forward for the Church,” in The Migrant Family in Asia: Reaching Out and Touching Them, ed. Anthony Rogers, FSC (Manila, Philippines: Office for Human Development, 2007): 13–27. The essay, however, focused more on the issue or the need for (re)unification of families.
See Joanne Heaney-Hunter, “Domestic Church: Guiding Beliefs and Daily Practices,” in Christian Marriage: Contemporary Theological and Pastoral Perspectives, ed. Michael G. Lawler and William P. Roberts (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1996): 59–78.
These include Julie Hanlon Rubio, David Matzko Mc-Carthy, Florence Caffrey Bourg and Richard Gaillardetz. Lisa Cahill, “Marriage: Developments in Catholic Theology and Ethics,” Theological Studies Vol. 64, No. 1 (March 2003): 97.
Even older generation of theological ethicists see some elements for reconsideration. Kenneth Himes and James Coriden explore the reasons for such reconsideration in “The Indissolubility of Marriage: Reasons to Reconsider.” Himes and Coriden think that indissolubility of a ratum et consummatum marriage is a doctrinal teaching open to revision by the magisterium, and that existing arguments are not sufficient to reject all proposals for alteration of the teaching. Issues raised by Himes and Coriden to explore the reasons for reconsideration include consent, consummation, the meaning of the bond, the reality of the bond, and marital commitment. At the heart of Himes and Coriden’s argument is the question: “What does it mean to say a marriage perdures even though the marital relationship has totally disintegrated? See Kenneth Himes and James Coriden, “The Indissolubility of Marriage: Reasons to Reconsider,” Theological Studies Vol. 65, No. 3 (September 2004): 480, 482–490.
With regard to the argument on the basis of sociological diversity, Atkinson contends there must be some boundaries and that when diversity is of such a nature that it attacks the constitutive structure of an entity, it cannot then be said to participate properly in that reality. Joseph Atkinson, “Family as Domestic Church: Developmental Trajectory, Legitimacy and Problems of Appropriation,” Theological Studies Vol. 66, No. 3 (September 2005): 602–603.
Hope S. Antone, “Asian Women and the Globalization of Labor,” The Journal of Theologies and Cultures in Asia Vol. 2 (2003): 102.
Moreover, in the process of detraditionalization, voice is displaced from established sources to the self. Anthony Giddens, The Runaway World: How Globalization Is Shaping Our Lives (London: Routledge, 2000) offers a more substantial discussion on this.
Joan Chittister, The Story of Ruth: Twelve Moments in Every Woman’s Life (Ottawa: Novalis, 2000).
Walter Burghardt, Justice: A Global Adventure (New York: Orbis, 2004), 6.
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Cruz, G.T. (2014). Old Challenges, New Contexts, and Strategies: The Experience of Migrant Women. In: Toward a Theology of Migration. Content and Context in Theological Ethics. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137375513_3
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