Daisy Abrego on Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy

In the Introduction of Global Women by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Hochschild, one of the points that the authors discuss is how women from less fortunate countries travel to wealthier countries in search of work. Even though there are benefits from searching employment in different countries, the families of these women are being left behind.

In the 1970s, due to the declining earning power of most men, many women had to "make up the difference" and support for their families. However, the roles of women in household began to go down. As a result, many women from poor countries are given the opportunity to find employment like "liberation" and have a chance to become breadwinners for their families and improving their children's lives. In exchange, these women have to leave their families and came to a "rich" country as a substitute for these upper class turned career-oriented women by doing their "womanly duties" of cleaning, cooking, taking care of children and even pleasuring men.

When these foreign women make the decision to leave their families to go work, it has a heavy impact them and their families over time. Josephine, a woman who migrated from Sri Lanka to work as a nanny in Athens, Greece, had to leave her three children behind so that she could take care of a stranger’s child. Although she leaves them behind so that she could provide for them, her absence had negative consequences for her children. The author mentions that her youngest does poorly at school and is withdrawn from the world, her middle child attempted suicide three times and her oldest had to get a job because what she made was still not enough. This made me realize how much foreign women sacrifice so much of their lives in order to put food on the table for her kids, but loses the chance of seeing their children grow up at the same time.

In today's society, I've seen many cases where female migrant workers have been affected by this. While female migrant workers have brought the best not only in their families but in their communities, it's still hard for them to not see their children. In an article called “The Sacrifices of an Immigrant Caregiver”, a filipina woman named Emma wanted to send her children to have a better future and go to college, so she came to New York and became a nanny. She talks about she hasn’t seen them in 16 years and how her children slowly feel disconnected with her. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/11/the-sacrifices-of-an-immigrant-caregiver

How can immigrant workers still have a strong relationship with their children despite not being there with them?