Abstract
Feminism and womanism are steady labors in the proverbial trenches. The very opposite of top-down change efforts, feminism and womanism only mobilize sustainable progress when many people’s hands and brains join in. The story of this important book’s creation and completion mirrors the very ways in which the women’s movement works all over the world. A 5-year effort, the germination of this project began in a 2007 working group of the Council of Social Work Education (CSWE) Council on the Role and Status of Women in Social Work Education. Two CSWE Annual Program Meetings then became sites of think-tank sessions on the intersections of gender oppression, globalization, and social work. The Unsettling Feminisms (un)conference at the University of Illinois at Chicago in May 2011, subsequently linked scholar activists who wanted to contribute to a book of essays that would excavate globalizing forces and the gendered structures and processes that, on the one hand, kill, maim, and silence women and girls in every country and, on the other hand, inspire people to shape reformist and revolutionary assaults on misogyny and sexism. Two years of assiduous writing and editing later, Finn, Perry, and Karandikar have offered an edited volume that no feminist or womanist social worker worth her salt should miss.
Gender Oppression and Globalization’s authors surgically dissect the logic and practice of neoliberals and their institutionalized efforts since the 1970s to dismantle social welfare programs in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, all in the name of enhancing efficiency, productivity, and prosperity. The impact on women and girls of various forms of fiscal and physical coercion in both public and private realms is documented with powerful illustrations.
The book’s organization makes excellent sense. The early chapters “bear witness and build consciousness” about gender oppression amid globalization. Then, the second section of essays provides examples of “courageous voices” of women who have deployed poetry, film, public education, women’s studies courses, critical race feminism, and culturally relevant pedagogy to help dismantle the “master’s house”(Lorde, 1984). The third section presents “critical theory and practice” with Ghanaian women living with HIV/AIDS and within Chicana feminisms. In the fourth section, “Policies and Practices,” three waves of globalization’s impact on South Korean women are studied as are the effects of Canadian immigration law and political economy on women immigrants in Ontario. The fifth section of the book, “From Grassroots to Global Action,” analyzes labor organizing by women casino workers who are union activists in Las Vegas’ gaming industry and offers a case study of Nicaraguan women’s initiatives to create sustainable food gardens in the town of Tola. “Pedagogy and Practice,” the final section, poses invaluable essays on teaching and learning within social work education about globalization and gender oppression.
No book, of course, can be all things to all feminists and womanists. The editors wisely acknowledge their regret that the book puts forward no chapters on indigenous and Arab women and girls. Another crucial gap is a focus on women from the Global South and from Central and Eastern Europe who migrate to Western Europe to escape starvation and a range of abuses that defy description.
The editors have articulated the hope that their book demonstrates the power of combining critical theory, diverse forms of investigation and performance, and grassroots action among feminists and womanists to undermine mountains of globalized gender oppression. They have succeeded admirably.