Valentine Moghadam has written a much-needed text outlining the work of transnational activists concerned with women’s rights worldwide.  Moghadam informs the reader that in an era characterized by heightened globalization and a restructuring of the state, there is a critical mass of educated, employed, mobile, and politically conscious women around the world, responding to the gendered process of globalization

Rothschild, Teal

English

DOCS@RWU

Reason and RespectVolume 2Issue 1 Spring 2006 Article 72-5-2008Valentine Moghadam. Globalizing women:transnational feminist networks. Baltimore: TheJohns Hopkins University Press, 2005.Teal RothschildRoger Williams UniversityFollow this and additional works at: http://docs.rwu.edu/rrCopyright ©2-5-2008 by the authorsReason and Respect is produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress).For more information, please contact mwu@rwu.edu.Recommended CitationRothschild, Teal (2006) "Valentine Moghadam. Globalizing women: transnational feminist networks. Baltimore: The Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 2005.," Reason and Respect: Vol. 2: Iss. 1, Article 7.Available at: http://docs.rwu.edu/rr/vol2/iss1/7RESPECTValentine Moghadam. Globalizing Women: TransnationalFeminist Networks. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 2005.Valentine Moghadam has written a much-needed rext outlining the work of transnational activists concerned withwomen's rights worldwide. Moghadam informs the reader that in an era characterized by heightened globalizationand a restructuring of the state, there is a critical mass of educated, employed, mobile, and politically consciouswomen around the world, responding to the gendered process of globalization. She approaches the global economicstructure as a set of economic policies and practices. Her point is to explain the worldwide social movement ofwomen in terms of globalization processes such as the feminization of labor, growing social inequalities, andincreased access to the new information and computer technologies by educated and politically active women.The book focuses on Transnational Feminist Net\'Vorks (TFNs). These TFN are defined as structuresthat unite women from three or more countries around a common agenda. She argues that the new globalfeminists have found common causes to align themselves and their groups with. Some of these causes includeglobal space; women disproportionately living in poverty; cultural forms that are no longer territoriallycontained; social movements connected to social institutions; and distinct status versus shared status.Moghadam maintains that the TFNs encompass the following attributes: they go beyond the idealismof the often critiqued 'feminist sisterhood,' they offer a political solidarity of feminists across the globe thattranscends all boundaries, and they are made up of diverse social movements that rely on an 'idea of net-works, rather than a singular unified movement. The TFNs possess an open criticism of global capitalism anda shared ideology of global feminism. The movement is primarily comprised of activists and academics whoselife work centers on women's rights, applied through a conscious cross-interdisciplinary approach.She uses an analytical perspective to address structural, concrete, economic aspects of globalizationthat generate inequalities and problematize solidarity.Employing a vast web of theoretical frameworks that link often disparate frames and literature together, sheprimarily draws from World SystemsTheoty, Marxism and Feminist Political Economy. The World SystemsTheoryshe utilizes postulates that gender, class, and capital and state operate within a hierarchical world system divided intocore, periphery, and semi-periphery. She highlights the consequences of globalization for women in the public andprivate spheres using a feminist political economy perspective--in particular the feminist political economy model thataddresses the role ofStrucrural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) in the 1980s in the developing world and their relationshipto growing inequality among the world's poorer women. Post-modernism (she asserts as synonymous with Post-colonialism), she claims, has a tendency to minimize the role of the state, which clearly as a Feminist Marxist is not thebasis of her theoretical stance. She separates herselfftom many other contemporary globalization scholars here, byasserting that in an increasingly global playing field the state 'still does matter' as an autonomous actor.TFNs contribute to several ideas about collective action and globalization: they are anti-neoliberalcapitalist-but not necessarily anti-globalist; they want to democratize and engender global governance, notdestroy it; and finally, they claim the state remains a key institutional actor because they favor the welfarist,develop mentalist form of the state that is both democratic and women friendly. Valentine Moghadam labelsthis stance as a critical realist approach to the state. This approach to the state is in direct contrast to whatMoghadam labels as postmodern or post-colonialism approaches, such as Leslie Sklair's. My reading of LeslieSklair's work is that she is focusing on transnational practices within specific institutional contexts that crossstate borders. Sklair claims that the global system operates at three levels: economic, political, and cultural/ideological. Her argument is that the transnational culture-ideology holds the system together (Sklair, 2002).This attention to culture and ideology has been confused as a postmodern non-materialisr stance. Attention tothe roles of culture and ideology in the gendered process of globalization need not be postmodern, but ratherfirmly situared into particular contexts with particular people, regions, issues, and conflicts.A main strength of the text is the elaborate connections Moghadam makes bet\'Veen three oftendisparate literatures: work on globalization (much of it economic); the scholarship on the growth of NGOs,1Rothschild: Valentine Moghadam.  Globalizing women: transnational feminist nePublished by DOCS@RWU, 2006civil society and citizenship, global civil society, ttansnational advocacy netwotks, and global social move-ments; and the more feminist literature that has focused on women's movements and women's organizations.The highlighted interconnections of these schools of thought offer an analysis of globalization as a multidi-mensional and gendered process of socio-demographic, economic, political, and cultural changes.Through ample socio-historical context, Moghadam emphasizes the nature and characteristics of women'sorganizations and the factors behind the emergence of transnational feminist networks in the mid-1980s. The notionof a 'women's world' develops a collective identity in the 1980s. In 1985, the Third United Nations World Conferenceon Women in Nairobi, Kenya, raised global consciousness of women and inequity throughout the world. During thistime period aswell, women began disproportionately involved in irregular forms of employment, yet simultaneouslyremained tied to the work of the family and home. Moghadam skillfully points out that this shift to the paid workforce did nor accompany a redistribution of childcare and domestic work. Rather, women throughout the world wereincreasing participation in the public sphere while maintaining their duties and responsibilities in the private sphere.Additionally, there was a rampant increase of fundamentalism in the developing world. It is ftom this context,Moghadam illustrates, that TFNs came to the foreftont, through the globalization process, by engaging with publicpolicy at the national and international levels to create change. By the 1990s, TINs aided in bridging the differencesbetween the North and South Divide. TFNs create, activate, or join global networks to mobilize pressure outside states.Moghadam provides accounts of six case study TFNs, describing the networks' activities, organiza-tional structures, and strengths and weaknesses. She uses empirical findings through interviewing and anextensive literature review to show how these organizations affect public policy, research, and advocacy.Two shared battles among these TFNs include hegemony of corporate capital and Western norms withpatriarchal agendas, and patriarchal nationalisms and fundamentalist movements. She points to lack ofvisibility and financial resources as the main limitations of the networks. The achievements of the networksare more expansive, according to Moghadam, including raising social and cultural awareness, organizing andparticipating in world conferences, promoting legislation protecting the rights of women world wide, andproviding a voice in public policy to monitor the status of women of the world.The organizations reject notions of cultural relativism in favor of a universalist approach: "Like otherTFNs, Women Living Under Muslim Laws, evinces a discourse and orientation that are universalistic andmodernist rather than postmodernist" (Moghadam, 2005, p.154). The rejection of cultural relativism is infavor of a unified notion of 'human rights.' This raises the question of a possibility of a 'global ethic' (Kung,1998), in which a conception and practice of women's rights are universal, regardless of cultural tradition and/or ideology. This is a dilemma that globalization scholars are presently addressing. Moghadam's stance ofrejecting cultural relativism is a bold one, in favor of creating a homogenous set of standards, regardless ofcultural difference, that 'protects' the rights of women worldwide.She argues that globalization has two faces: one of inequalities and one of democratization. Theglobal economic environment gave rise to a new consciousness, influenced the formation of new women'sorganizations, and inspired a new form of women's organizing and mobilizing. The rise of Information ofComputer Technologies aids the strength of the TFNs. In addition, the twin processes of global economicrestructuring and religious fundamentalism galvanized women around the world and resulted in the forma-tion ofTFNs. In response, Moghadam has illustrated how women's organizations are integral elements ofglobalization in its economic, cultural, and political dimensions.Moghadam posits that the labor movement could benefit from the lessons ofTFN if the labormovement became more global in its approach to collective action. However, labor is a different beast entirely,and historically a universalist approach to labor has only led to more factions among industries, skill level,gender, race, ethnicity, and unionization status. The unique position of the TFNs is that they cannot be usedas a blue print for global social movement activism. This text is a much needed addition to the literature onglobalization, and feminist activism more generally.Kung, Hans. (1998). A Global Ethic fOr Global Politics and Economics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Sklair, Leslie. (2002). Globalization: Capitalism and Its Alternatives. Third Edition. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.Teal RothschildAssistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and Sociology2Reason and Respect, Vol. 2 [2006], Iss. 1, Art. 7http://docs.rwu.edu/rr/vol2/iss1/7

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Valentine Moghadam. Globalizing women: transnational feminist networks. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.

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