Gender, Globalization, and Democratization

Topics of Concern

The ISSC Research Programme on Globalization, Gender, and Democratization published a book edited by Rita Mae Kelly, Jane H. Bayes, Mary Hawkesworth, and Brigitte Young entitled Gender, Globalization, and Democracy (Rowman and Littlefield 2001). This book represents the scope of the Research Programme's mission and identifies some major themes of the programme's work.

• One theme of the programme's work involves learning how globalization is understood differently in different parts of the world.
• A second concern involves learning the ways that economic globalization is similar or different in its impact on women globally. Globalization involves global forces such as the feminization of labor and increased trade with gendered aspects, but the impact of these changes is often context specific and uneven.
• A third topic of interest to the research programme is the changes in gender relationships created by economic globalization processes, by migration, by the increased number and strength of transnational organizations, as well as by the exchange of ideas and ideologies.
• A fourth subject involves migration and gender and raises a host of gendered questions about sexual trafficking, about settler societies, about borders, immigration policies, identification procedures, civil and human rights, remittances, transnational organizations, new forms of political participation, and about problems of human security.
• A fifth topic concerns the relationship between gender, globalization and macroeconomic policies. The rhetoric and the policies of dominant neo-liberal economic models are often based on very gendered assumptions.
• A sixth area of concern involves gender, globalization, and democratization. What are the prospects that globalization offers for democratic processes that include women? Has globalization created more opportunities for women's participation in the public sphere, for women's leadership, for transnational political participation, for a kind of democratization that includes women?