Overworked 4

Faith: More about work: Today I was reading a book review in The Nation magazine about a book on GLOBAL WOMEN: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy. (Edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild). This book is about the “feminization of migration…half the world’s 120 million legal and illegal migrants are now believed to be women. They are assuming the cast-off domestic roles of middle-and high-income women in the First World” (in the “care” business, as nannies, domestics, or prostitutes). The authors identify “what they call a ‘care deficit’ in wealthier countries, as women who used to stay home and provide the emotional sustenance for a family now go off to work, leaving a nurturing vacuum in the home. The solution? Hire women of color from poorer countries to pick up the emotional slack.” Thus women of color and poor women are now not only needed for their manual labor and the reproductions of labor, but also for affective labor for which they do not get paid or rewarded in indirect ways.

This is so clearly a situation in which empathy is of no use at all. Patriarchy and its product - Empire - must continue to be fought and resisted. But it also really puts it to me in terms of how I am living my own life. What is it important for me to be doing now?