Working Across Borders: Global Restructuring and Women's Work

In the last quarter century, economic globalization has intensified. Multinational corporations have increased their global influence to an astonishing degree. Global restructuring aids corporations in crossing national borders in search of conditions that increase production and profit. Access to cheap, unregulated or underregulated labor is critical to this process.

Corporate interests have used domestic and international laws to their benefit. It is essential that women do the same. Immigrants, women, people of color, gays and lesbians, and poor people, are all at a marked disadvantage vis-a-vis multinational corporations and financial institutions. The latter have shaped and benefitted from laws fundamentally restructuring global economic arrangements.

Women must look across national borders to learn about legal, social, and political forms of organization that can be used to buttress, rather than undermine, the social position of the most powerless "global" actors-migrant women of color. The solution demands that we reject the simple binary categorizations of men and women, and people of color and whites. Citizenship, class, and culture are central to the discussion, but so too are differentials of power on a personal, national, and international scale.