Gender and globalization – there’s been a
lot of discussion. We have learnt how
global markets and financialization change the lives of women and men locally;
how global media spread sexist images and stereotypes; how local gender
imaginaries are hybridized with global capitalist culture.
The gender of Empire...
The gender of globalization – there’s less
discussion of that. But it’s important
to recognize that globalization itself is a gendered process. We know that was true of its ancestor,
imperialism – carried out by masculinized forces, creating gender-divided
colonial economies, and spreading missionary patriarchies.
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| The gender of empire |
Consider now the massive concentrations of
men at the top levels of corporate business, state power and military
force. Consider why the huge private
fortunes (currently putting US politics in crisis) are sometimes inherited, but
never assembled, by women. Think of the
gender-divided workforces of the industries that lead the process of
“globalization” – bulk transport, light manufacturing, finance, ICT.
This isn’t the old patriarchy. But it certainly isn’t the new post-feminist,
gender-free utopia!
I’ve written an essay about gender, and
especially masculinities, in key centres of global power: the transnational
managers, the state elites of the global North, the rulers of authoritarian
states, and the oligarchs who control personal fortunes.
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| ...and of Globalization |
It's called "100 Million Kalashnikovs:
Gendered Power on a World Scale".
It’s published in the first issue of the
new series of the famous Mexican journal Debate Feminista, now edited by the
Gender Studies Programme at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM-PUEG).
You will find it OPEN ACCESS on the Debate
Feminista website here, and on the "Science Direct" site here.
If you can’t get it from those sites,
please send me an email and I’ll send you a copy. This is in English; a Spanish translation will
be online soon.
