{"id":3364,"date":"2009-09-09T08:54:23","date_gmt":"2009-09-09T12:54:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=3364"},"modified":"2011-05-31T12:41:10","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T16:41:10","slug":"sociologist-examines-women%e2%80%99s-role-in-shaping-globalization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2009\/09\/sociologist-examines-women%e2%80%99s-role-in-shaping-globalization\/","title":{"rendered":"Sociologist Examines Women\u2019s Role in Shaping Globalization"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Manisha<\/a>
Manisha Desai, director of women's studies, in her office in Beach Hall. Photo by Frank Dahlmeyer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Women are playing a major role in shaping the globalization of trade, politics, and culture in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and are not merely peripheral players in the global movement, according to Manisha Desai, director of women\u2019s studies.<\/p>\n

In her new book, Gender and the Politics of Possibilities <\/em>(Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), <\/em>she argues that women around the world are social actors who actively constitute globalization, in contrast to many mainstream accounts of globalization that focus on multinational corporations, technological processes, and global institutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to present a picture of globalization that showed women as agents who were doing more than just engaging in low-wage manufacturing work or care work,\u201d says Desai, an associate professor of sociology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. \u201cI wanted to show that women were not just the victims of globalization, but are actually shaping globalization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Desai\u2019s book is based on the premise that men and women participate in different ways in the processes of globalization. She examines three case studies: cross border traders in Africa; transnational feminists working through the United Nations, grassroots collaborations, and the World Social Forum; and modemmujers in Latin America, women who are bringing the benefits of information and communications technologies to rural women.<\/p>\n

Desai has gained insights on the globalization of the market place first-hand through her travels.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look in southern or West Africa, most of the people who sell things on the streets and in markets are women,\u201d she says. \u201cEverywhere I would notice this. Particularly in India, I would notice women subcontracting in their homes, doing piecework.\u201d Women sell mostly foodstuff and arts and crafts, she adds.<\/p>\n

Cross-Border Traders<\/h3>\n

Desai says the mainstream literature on globalization \u2013 particularly in the business field \u2013 has not looked at cross-border trade, which is what many women are involved in.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than 70 percent of cross-border traders are women,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s particularly true in Africa, and to some extent in central Europe and Asia, but we don\u2019t look at them because that\u2019s very often considered either illegal or informal or the underground economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cYet it\u2019s mostly that trade that really supports the livelihood of most people\u201d she adds. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to really look at globalization, we need to look at the trade that actually supports people\u2019s livelihoods.\u201d<\/p>\n

Desai notes that, although cross-border trade has been going on for a long time, contemporary globalization has very specific meaning for women who conduct trade across borders. In southern Africa, for example, traders are now able to go into post-apartheid South Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has been an opening up of borders,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Desai says women in West Africa and Ghana are going to Dubai, to the United States, to the United Kingdom, and other places they did not go before globalization to purchase consumer goods that they then sell back home.<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of this would have been possible in the past,\u201d she says. \u201cWomen 300 years ago were not going to Dubai and to the United States and the UK. Those places didn\u2019t even have the kinds of goods they\u2019re trading today. Nation states also did not allow movement of goods and people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Desai notes that women who engage in cross-border trade have the ability to function in many cultures and languages. \u201cThe cross-border traders are the new cosmopolitans,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Focus on Gender<\/h3>\n

The book is part of Rowman & Littlefield\u2019s Gender Lens Series, which is devoted to social change aimed at eradicating inequalities. The term \u201cgender lens\u201d refers to giving visibility to gender in social phenomena.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe book in some ways has come out of my earlier work,\u201d Desai says. \u201cI\u2019m a sociologist by training, and most of my work has been on social movements and social change.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a child growing up in India, Desai became aware of gender prejudice at an early age. During the 1970s and \u201980s, she says, schools of social work, medicine, and engineering were hotbeds of radicalism in India, and Desai became involved in women\u2019s issues. She earned a master\u2019s degree in social work at Bombay University, and later won a fellowship to pursue a doctorate at Washington University in St. Louis, where her dissertation focused on the women\u2019s movement in India.<\/p>\n

For the past decade, Desai has studied transnational feminism, gender, and globalization, and how globalization has shaped and affected women\u2019s movements around the world. An earlier book she wrote with UConn sociology professor Nancy Naples looked at women\u2019s activism and globalization.<\/p>\n

In addition to academic positions at UConn, the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Desai has worked as a senior programme specialist in the Gender Equity and Development Section of the Human Rights Division at UNESCO in Paris, and served as the Sociologists for Women in Society’s NGO representative to the United Nation’s Economic and Social Council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Manisha Desai\u2019s new book on globalization shifts the focus from corporations to individuals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-3364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 05:38:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3364"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37301,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3364\/revisions\/37301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3364"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=3364"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}