Gender and Women Essay

Echo Farmer

Women in International Relations

Dr. Schemenauer

Gendered Aspects and Effects of Globalization

The roots of globalization can be traced to the United States involvement in World War II

and the formation of the Soviet Union. Prior to these events, both the U.S and Russia were less

politically active outside themselves. The United States broke with its isolationist doctrine and

involved itself in World War II, only when it was attacked directly and could no longer ignore the

events occurring in world politics. As Russia became the Soviet Union, it gained such a

substantial mass that it could not remain a private state. Also, the nature of communist doctrine is

to continue to work toward the liberation of oppressed workers, which will naturally exist

outside of a communist state; therefore, the growth of the Soviet Union was inevitable and the

involvement of the U.S. In world politics was inexorable. The nature of the second world war

was, itself, unique in that Asia was intimately involved with the politics outside itself. During

this time, by revolutionizing war, politics were revolutionized. The alliances made demanded

continuance and were not between single nations, but groups. It is only natural that the League

of Nations and eventually, the United Nations sprung from these events.

The actions of allied nations after WWII, also laid the framework for economic

globalization. Essentially, the work of allied nations to prosecute those “at fault” for the war and

reintegrate survivors thought broad actions, such as creating the state of Israel, created the global

political economy as we know it. By taking charge of the monies and restructuring of “losing”

nations as well as lending and borrowing between “winning” nations, the necessity of a

continued global political economy was assured. The term for and formal doctrine of

globalization grew out of the actions of neoliberals. This tactic emphasizes the necessity of

deregulation and privatization to allow the free market to take its natural course and balance the

global economy (Shepherd 220). The idea that globalization, allowing more actors from outside

an economy, will be to the benefit of all actors requires an extreme amount of faith in the

capitalist free market system. This is an inherently western, gendered belief that assumes all

economies are structurally capitalist, are driven based on western, gendered social structures, and

if they are not, then they should be/wish to be so.

Globalization can be said to be gendered because it plays out the masculine/feminine

dynamic by mapping those associated characteristics onto nations, cultures, and economies.

Fiscally dominant nations become masculine and therefore superior. The economic,

governmental, and cultural practices are also superior by rite of belonging to the dominant

(masculine) nation. The masculine nations must then assume their protector role and protect

weak, less developed, inferior nations from their greatest potential harm: their own essential

being. This is why globalization has transformed from a fiscal initiative, however arrogant in its

inspiration, into a complete cultural and social force. This leads to internalization of the

“feminine” roles proscribed by the global political economy at the national/societal level and the

personal level, causing people to accept further subjugation.

One of the chief problems with neoliberal globalization is that it ignores the current

position of women in both their own national economies and the global political economy as it

exists. This means that the doctrine of globalization itself is not only gendered, but genders its

actors both in the way it is executed and the way it acts upon those that it supposedly helps

(Shepherd 224). According to the doctrine of globalization, gender equality is part and parcel of

economic growth and with sufficient, sustainable growth, equality will come (Shepherd 228).

The

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