Madison Goracke on "Introduction" from the book Global Women

Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Hochschild, authors of Global Women argue that there is a global inequality when it comes to women, men, and their ways of provision. They state that women travel to other “richer” countries, looking for work to provide for their families, which in turn leaves their children with no one to care for them, and their husbands who have no drive to step up and accomplish household tasks.

The authors explained that “rich” countries need female roles, (maids, nannies, and sex workers) that can be filled with foreign counterparts. These women from other poorer countries have little choice but to leave their families and seek out work elsewhere. They couldn’t stay in their poor countries for jobs but instead chose to go to wealthier countries, as to find the work that they needed. They end up taking the place of some female role models in developed and taking care of families, which I see as a substitution for not having their families available to them.

The foreign female workers do whatever they can to provide for their families, sometimes spending the majority of their own children’s youth away from home. The husbands of these women end up the real “head of the household.” They are responsible for finding work, caring for the family and raising children, which is often is seen as a “women’s job.” This sends men spiraling into alcoholism, gambling, and ultimately shying away from their ultimate responsibility: their families. I feel as if the role is oddly reversed in some way; having the women as the official head of the household, the breadwinner of the family. Because of men being incapable of work, it leaves the family in a world of never-ending poverty.

This article, https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/women-migrant-workers-us talks about the migration of women from foreign cultures to find work in America. Usually, these jobs are factory workers, seamstresses, or, like the reading discusses, childcare. These foreign female workers are forced to work in atrocious conditions to provide for their families, to whom they are fully dedicated.  

How can we as a society assist these women when they are torn from their families because of the needed provision?