Danijela Kaurin on “Introduction” from the book Global Women by Ehrenreich and Hochschild

In the introduction of “Global Women” by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Hochschild, it is discussed how women from less fortunate countries travel to wealthier countries in search of work. Traveling for work results in families being left behind with little to no stable supervision along with growing tensions.

The writers of this piece explain that rich countries have begun lacking the roles of females in the household. More women have taken up professional careers, which is a great thing, but has taken out time for them to do their so called “womanly duties” of cleaning house, making food, taking care of children and pleasuring men. Why women are supposedly assigned these duties is unknown but this has apparently raised an issue. With this now a problem, the answer that has come to be is that, women from less fortunate countries, like Josephine, have decided to leave their families and come to a “rich” country as substitutes for these now career oriented women. Essentially women from these countries have become the “breadwinners” for their families.

When these foreign women decide to leave their families to go work, it has a heavy impact on them. Many people in these countries rely on the women in the family due to the men either constantly working or abusive and are alcoholics or just not in the picture. Women are away for most of their childrens lives because they are busy taking care of others’. In continuation, a woman risks her life, to put food on the table for her kids and takes the loss of not seeing them grow up or having the privilege to raise them. This is very heart breaking. All of this now results in unstable children, loss of communication between their mother and an overall dislike/anger towards her as seen in Josephines story. Women have been set up to these so called “duties” and have been almost forced to become nannies or sex workers to better off their family and better fulfil these expectations the world has set for women.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/oct/24/the-vanished-filipino-domestic-workers-working-abroad

 This article was recently written explaining the story of a lady named Marilyn Restor and her experience as she journeys her way into the nanny workforce.  She had left her children for more than ten years, sent money every month, and skyped every week, and then something happened to Marilyn that happens to many in her field, she was abused and killed. Women like Marilyn traveled across the world to a foreign country to work for a wealthy family to better their families lives abroad. They saw their families via video calls, and set the responsibility to family members to raise their children. All while tensions grew between them.  

Is anything being done to create programs for these women who travel abroad for work? To benefit them?