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Labor Migration and International Sexual Division of Labor: A Feminist Perspective

  • Chapter
Gender and Immigration

Abstract

For the past two decades, gender has emerged as an important variable for the study of development. Feminist scholars have argued that the development process has had different impact on men and women in developing nations (Beneria, 1981; Boserup, 1970; Brydon and Chant, 1989; Charlton, 1984; Rogers, 1980; Sen and Grown, 1988; Tinker, 1990). The differential impact of development is in fact reflective of the pre-existing gender inequality within the developing world, and, in turn, reinforces its gender stratification through this process. The existing feminist literature on development has pointed out that the increasing globalization of economy has created the division of labor by gender at the international level (Leacock and Safa, 1986; Mies, 1986; Nash and Fernandez-Kelly, 1983; Ward, 1990; Young et al., 1981). For example, while the third world occupies the bottom end of the global production linkage, women in the third world provide the source of cheap labor for this production process as a result of the gender and racial ideologies (Enloe, 1989; Leacock and Safa, 1986; Mies, 1986; Young et al., 1981). In short, gender has always been an essential principle organizing the political economy of international development (Pettman. 1996).

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Authors
  1. Shu-Ju Ada Cheng
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Drake University, USA

    Debra L. DeLaet (Assistant Professor of Political Science) (Assistant Professor of Political Science)

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© 1999 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Cheng, SJ.A. (1999). Labor Migration and International Sexual Division of Labor: A Feminist Perspective. In: Kelson, G.A., DeLaet, D.L. (eds) Gender and Immigration. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333983461_3

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