Is Local : Global as Feminine : Masculine? Rethinking the Gender of Globalization
Author(s)
Freeman, Carla
Abstract
The existing literature on globalization and culture focuses mainly on (1) macro-analyses of economic globalization, and (2) microanalyses of the role of women in the global economy. Thus, gender has played an important role only in local empirical studies of globalization. The author proposes that an integrated feminist approach to globalization theory is urgently needed and illustrates this point with an example involving the economic role of the traditional Caribbean “higglers” (marketers), women who buy and sell goods and produce in the town market. Main topics include the need to re-imagine the “local”; the unique emphasis of feminist scholars on micro processes and the individual; the impact of globalization on formal and informal economic frontiers; and the gendered dualism of labor, in which production is viewed as masculine, whereas consumption is trivialized as feminine. The author concludes that consumption and production are equally important economic activities, and that economists need to rethink the globalization concept.
