SS 119 Laurie Nisonoff
Fall 2004 FPH
209 X5397
Cora
Swartz X5071
Does Economic Development Enrich or
Impoverish
Women’s Lives?
What happens to women when societies “modernize” and industrialize their economies? Is capitalist economic development a step forward or a step backwards for women in industrialized and developing countries? In this seminar we look at debates about how some trends in worldwide capitalist development affect women’s status, roles and access to resources, and locate the debates in historical context.
In the “global assembly line” debate we look at women’s changing work roles. We ask whether women workers in textile and electronic factories gain valuable skills, power, and resources through these jobs, or whether they are super exploited by multinational corporations. In the population control debate, we ask whether population policies improve the health and living standards of women and their families or whether the main effect of these policies is to control women, reinforcing their subordinate positions in society. Other topics include the effects of economic change on family forms, the nature of women’s work in the so-called “informal sector”, and what’s happening in the current worldwide economic crisis.
Book Purchases:
The following book is available at the
The Women, Gender and Development Reader, edited by Nalini Visvanathan, Lynn Duggan, Laurie Nisonoff and Nan Wiegersma, ZED Books Ltd., 1997.
All other required readings are included in the photocopied packet, which will be sold at the bookstore.
All course materials, including some suggestions for further reading and research projects, are also available on reserve at the library.
Course Requirements:
Participation in class discussion, reading assignments, occasional short response papers or fieldwork assignments, three short papers, and a final research paper. Study questions will be distributed in class for written assignments. Credit for the course will rest on timely and effective completion of the course requirements. More on this process will be distributed later in the semester.
SS 119
September 9 Introduction – No assigned reading.
September 14 Annette Fuentes and Barbara Ehrenreich, “The New Factory Girls”, Multinational Monitor, August 1983, pp. 5-9. (Handout)
September 16 Maria Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, “Maquiladoras: The View from Inside”, in Reader, pp. 203-215.
Laurie Nisonoff, “Introduction to Part 3:A”, in Reader, pp. 177-181.
Linda Y.C. Lim, “Capitalism, Imperialism, and Patriarchy: The Dilemma of Third-World Women in Multinational Factories”, in Reader, pp. 216-229.
September 21 Diane Elson and Ruth Pearson, “The Subordination of Women and the Internationalization of Factory Production”, in Reader, pp. 191-203.
Diane L. Wolf, “Daughters, Decisions and Dominations: An Empirical and Conceptual Critique of Household Strategies”, in Reader, pp. 118-132.
Slide Presentation:
Women in the Global Assembly Line;
September 23 James H. Weaver, Steven H. Arnold, Paula Cruz, and Kenneth Kusterer, “Competing Paradigms of Development”, Social Education, April/May 1989, pp. 209-213. (Packet)
September 28 Review previous unit – no additional reading.
First paper due on global assembly line
September 30 Nalini Visvanathan, “General Introduction to Reader”, pp. 1-6.
Sue Ellen Charlton, “Development in History and Process”, in Reader, pp. 7-13.
Nalini Visvanathan, “Introduction to Part 1”, in Reader, pp. 17-29.
Irene Tinker, “The Making of a Field: Advocates, Practitioners and Scholars”, in Reader, pp. 33-42.
Lourdes Beneria, “Accounting for Women’s Work: The Progress of Two Decades”, in Reader, pp. 112-118.
October 5 Ester
Boserup, “Loss of status Under European Rule,” in Women’s Role in Economic
Development, Penguin, 1970, pp. 53-65. (Packet) (readings continued on to next page)
Lourdes Beneria and Gita Sen, “Accumulation, Reproduction and Women’s Role in Economic Development: Boserup Revisited”, in Reader, pp. 42-51.
October 7 Betsy Hartmann, “Introduction”, “Security and Survival”, “The Malthusian Orthodoxy”, and “A Womb of One’s Own” in Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, Second Edition, South End Press, 1995, pp. Xv-xxi and 3-56. (Packet)
October 12 Fall Break – no class meeting.
October 14 Betsy Hartmann, “The Plan Behind Family Planning”, and “The Light at the End of the Demographic Tunnel”, in Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, Second Edition, pp. 57-72 and 289-303. (Packet)
Betsy Hartmann, “Women, Population and the Environment: Whose Consensus? Whose Empowerment?”, in Reader, pp. 293-302.
October 19 Marlyn Dalsimer and Laurie Nisonoff, “The Implications of the New Agricultural and One-Child Family Policies for Rural Chinese Women”, Feminist Studies, 13:3, Fall 1987, pp. 583-607. (Packet)
Marlyn Dalsimer and Laurie Nisonoff, “Abuses Against Women and Girls under the One-Child Family Plan of the People’s Republic of China”, in Reader, pp. 284-293.
Library Assignment Due
October 21 Perdita Huston, “We are Like Trees Growing in the Shade: Women within the Family”, in Third World Women Speak Out, Praeger, 1979, pp. 33-43.
Omega Aguero, “A Man, A Woman”, in Pamela Mordecai and Betty Wilson (eds.), Her True-True Names: An Anthology of Women’s Writing from the Caribbean, Heinemann International, 1989, pp. 35-8.
Abioseh Nicol, “The Truly Married Woman”, in Naomi Katz and Nancy Milton (eds.) Fragment from a Lost Diary and Other Stories, Beacon, 1973, pp. 107-117.
Daphne Patai, “Doroteia: Family
Life Doesn’t Exist Anymore”, in Brazilian Women Speak,
October 26 Lynn Duggan, “Introduction to Part 2”, in Reader, pp. 103-108.
Jeanne Koopman, “The Hidden Roots of the African Food Problem: Looking within the Rural Household”, in Reader, pp. 132-141.
Sylvia Chant, “Single-Parent Families: Choice or Constraint? The Formation of Female-Headed Households in Mexican Shanty Towns”, in Reader, pp. 155-162.
October 28 Bina Agarwal, “Gender
Relations and Food Security: Coping with Seasonality, Drought, and Famine in
Joan Mencher, “Please Tell Them for Us”, in Cultural Survival Quarterly (CSQ), Winter 1992, 16:4, pp. 52-53. (Packet)
November 2 Laurie Nisonoff, “Introduction to Part 3:B”, in Reader, pp. 182-184.
A. Lynn Bolles, “Common Ground of
Creativity”, in CSQ,
Winter 1992, 16:4, pp. 34-37. (Packet)
Gracia Clark, “Flexibility Equals Survival”, in CSQ, Winter 1992, 16:4, pp. 21-214. (Packet)
Ali Mari Tripp, “Deindustrialization and the Growth of Women’s Economic Associations and Networks in Urban Tanzania”, in Reader, pp. 238-250.
November 4 “Cancion de los Sindicatos de las Trabajadoras del Hogar”,(
Song of Household Workers’ Unions), in Elsa M. Chaney and
Maria Garcia Castro (eds.), Muchachas No
More: Household
Workers in
Elsa M. Chaney and Maria Garcia Castro,
“A New Field for Research and Action”, in Muchachas No More: Household
Workers in
Yasmeen Mohiuddin, “Female Headed Households and Urban Poverty in Pakistan”, in Nancy Folbre, Barbara Bergmann, Bina Agarwal, and Maria Floro (eds.), Women’s Work in the World Economy, NYU Press, 1993, pp. 61-81. (Packet)
November 9 Wendy
Lee, “Prostitution and tourism in
Nanneke Redclift and M. Thea Sinclair (eds.), Working Women: International Perspectives on Labour and Gender Ideology, Routledge, 1991, pp. 79-103. (Packet)
Claudia Garcia-Moreno, “AIDS: Women are Just Not Transmitters”, in Reader, pp. 302-309.
Lynn Stephen, “Marketing Ethnicity”, in CSQ, Winter 1992, 16:4, pp. 25-27. (Packet)
Haunani Kay Trask and Mililani Trask, “The Aloha Industry”, CSQ, Winter 1992, 16:4, pp. 50-51. (Packet)
November 11 Exam/Advising Day – no class meeting
November 16
The World Bank, “Overview”, in World
Development Report. 1991,
Nikki van der Gaag, “Women: Still Something to Shout About”, in New Internationalist, August 1995, pp. 7-10. (Packet)
November 18 Kathleen Sullivan, “Protagonists of Change”, CSQ, Winter 1992, 16:4, pp. 38-40. (Packet)
Carmen Diana Deere, Helen Safa, Peggy Antrobus, et. al. (eds.), “Impact of the Economic Crisis on Poor Women and Their Households”, in Reader, pp. 267-277.
Takiwaa Manuh, “
November 23 Ayesha Iman, “SAP is really sapping
us”, NI, July 1994, pp. 12-13. (Packet)
A, Lynn Bolles, “Surviving Manley and Seaga: Case Studies of Women’s Responses to Structural Adjustment Policies”, in Review of Radical Political Economics (RRPE), Fall & Winter 1991, 23:3&4, pp. 20-36. (Packet)
Sista Ansa an
Granny, “A Chat ‘bout Life and Debt”, NI, August 1995, p. 26. (Packet)
November 25 Thanksgiving – no class meeting.
November 30 Nalini Visvanathan, “General Introduction”, in Reader, pp. 1-6, reread.
Nalini Visvanathan, “Introduction to Part 1”, in Reader, pp. 17-32, reread, especially pp. 26-29.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses”, in Reader, pp. 79-86.
Margaret Snyder and Mary Tadesse, “The African Context: Women in the Political Economy”, in Reader, pp. 75-78.
Mary Castro, “To My Daughter Aurora/ A Mi Hija Aurora”, in
RRPE, Summer 1984, 16:1, p. 185. (Packet)
December 2
Betsy Hartmann, “The Population Framework: Inside or Outside?” and “Appendix” in Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, Second Edition, South End Press, 1995, pp. 305-313. (Packet)
Kate Young, “Planning from a Gender Perspective: Making a World of Difference”, in Reader, pp. 366-374.
Ida Susser, “Women as Political
Actors in
Seung-kyung Kim,
“Women Workers and the Labor Movement in
Kalima Rose, “SEWA; Women in Movement”, in Reader, pp. 382-386.
December 7 Presentations – no additional assigned reading.
Final Paper Due. Enclose it and all previous work in a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Self-evaluation (in hard copy as well as on thehub) is required to complete the course.
December 9 Presentations – no additional assigned reading.