Welcome                                   

The Gender and Globalization initiative aims to create a greater awareness within our community and beyond of the gendered nature of current economic and social transformations. Globalization has become a popular phrase used to refer to a range of loose and often contradictory phenomena. The Gender and Globalization initiative is intended not only to explore and clarify key issues within current globalization debates, but also to examine the social and economic impacts of the increasing hyper-mobility of capital and culture on different groups of men, women, and households. A number of key themes have emerged in the study of the gendered nature of globalization processes.

How can we better understand the migration, dislocation, and reorganization of particular types of male, female, and child labor in the process of economic globalization? Poor women, for example, appear to be more often among the most affected groups because they are less geographically mobile, face greater barriers to occupational mobility, and are disproportionately represented in sectors of the labor market that are underpaid and unprotected.

How does the nature of state responses to globalizing pressures affect the gendered nature of political struggles? As an illustration, scholars have noted how many nation-states have cutback their welfare functions in order to compete more effectively for global capital. Such cutbacks have disproportionately affected the poor and, particularly, women who often bear the responsibility for the reproduction of households.

What are the opportunities and limitations that the new communication technologies pose to overcoming the gender inequalities that have accompanied globalization? Thus, cultural globalization processes have created apparent opportunities for some groups of men and women to create hybrid transnational networks of support and activism while also contributing to the destruction of cultural traditions often replacing them with new forms of gender specific exploitation.

The Gender and Globalization initiative combines team-taught graduate seminars, an undergraduate course, speaker series, workshops, and collaborative writing projects around these questions. Members are also engaged in compiling an edited volume of materials elaborating the various issues described earlier that may become a textbook for future courses both here at Syracuse and elsewhere.

These programs are being conducted in over 140 countries across the world. Over 20 million people have been benefited by these programs.