Global feminism

Forced commitment to double shifts, struggle for individual autonomy, and blurring the private and public sphere of labour are all additional concerns to the primary issue for migrant women. Wealth disparity skews significantly the access of women, and more so mothers, to the right to motherhood.The phenomena of motherhood in a transnational and contemporary time creates structural constraints for migrant women. In juggling their careers—that often stretch to encompass their whole day—alongside their children and labour at home, which is regularly overlooked by their families, immigrant mothers are subject to upholding almost impossible standards. Abusive employers and intimate violence is not the only problem these women have to face, but there are structural issues regarding the right to motherhood in this transnational era. Women immigrants leave their chance overseas at an idealised motherhood of watching their children grow up while performing their gender role, and deport to be the breadwinner. The restructuring of care from the effects of globalisation and neoliberalism institutionalises these women. The double standard and multiple expectations imposed upon them from first their cultural background and second the Western ideal of the working woman—both coming after their need for economic stability and role of managing their households—leave these women scrambling to survive.

Globalisation is constantly changing and as a result it is supporting the phenomena of women in the global south migrating to developed countries to serve as domestic labourers. The role of transnational mothering within a neoliberal spectrum affects the exploitation of women through the deprivation of their citizen rights, by extracting the benefits of immigrant's labour while minimising or eliminating any obligations, whether social or fiscal to the society or state. Migrant women of Third World countries are not drawn from their countries to the advancing economy of the First World, rather drawn from their economies that have been disrupted and distorted by Western colonial incursions, leaving many to be torn free of their roots and recruited to countries to fill its non permanent labour needs, preventing competition with native workers; fulfilling the complementary void. Transnational mothering is viewed as an accommodation for both classes.

Motherhood, along with reproductive freedom and marriage, is the fundamental right of women but is prohibited by nations that justify foreign domestic services, as much as view immigrant women as a threat to its nationalism. Nations create a process of racial formation through which women of different national and racial identities experience discrepant integration within a society, ultimately contributing to hierarchies of citizenship. In relation to social Darwinism, natives believe that Third World migrants "just can't make it", and fear degeneration, thus nations try to weed out those who do not fit the upper or middle class society in ways such as sterilisation; e.g.; black women are identified as devious, immoral, domineering, sexually promiscuous, and bad mothers, resulting in their reproductive rights being threatened by regulation. Transnational mothering sees the disparity between the comfort of a Western woman in a Western country, with all the tools she requires at her disposal to live a healthy life, support her family and raise her children while maintaining a healthy work-life balance, while Third World migrants—who are integral to the Westerner’s ability to live with ease—struggle to experience in a healthy capacity at both their workplaces or in terms of raising their children and leading a regular domestic life. Global feminism and Third World feminism wish to not only address and make known these power structures existing throughout the world but dismantle them in order to reach an era where all women, regardless of race, wealth, nationality, etc. have equal opportunity and limited—ideally none—patriarchal oppression.

Additionally, as Western feminism began to make contact with the global south, many women objected to the most radical strands of its ideology that demonised marriage, motherhood, and men. The relationship between motherhood and women's movements has led to the advent of Motherism, coined by the creator Catherine Acholonu as "an Afrocentric alternative to feminism".^[1]In some parts of Africa, radical Western feminism was seen as an unhelpful imposition that did not align with the realities of African women's lives. Motherism was meant to bring inclusion to a movement that was seen as polarising. This split in view points is one that must be accounted for in Global feminism, as the women of the Third World and those of developed nations will not see eye to eye in this sense, as according to their level of education, access to work opportunities and general societal beliefs regarding marital status and the birthing of children.

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Many of the feminist movements in East Asia have been empowered by global, rights-based feminism from organizations like the UN and their international treaty CEDAW to make national changes in their own countries. Taking a human rights approach, as the UN aims to, allowed Japanese feminists to push for the Equal Employment Opportunity Law (1985) and the Basic Law for a Gender Equal Society (1999) to be enacted.[5] Similarly, Korean activists experienced further gains in gender equity after joining the UN in 1991, and the advent of the Beijing Declaration.[6]Many of these gains came from Korean democratization and the election of a progressive government in the 1990s, but the changing international norms surrounding women's rights were also a factor. On the other hand, a backlash to women's rights movements around the globe is likely to facilitate backsliding in the same way.

Many East Asian countries participated in the #MeToo Movement, including Japan, China, South Korea, and the Philippines.^[3]While the movement was started by an American activist, its online nature helped it to spread and become truly global. Even despite the widespread censorship of social media in China, the movement grew, albeit largely limited to university students.^[4] The risks associated with speaking out against men in powerful positions and their corresponding punishments are much more severe in Asian countries. Thankfully, the barrier created through the online platforms used during the #MeToo Movement allowed women belonging to these nations to freely speak out with a lower degree of fear surrounding the otherwise taboo topic.

• Feminism
• RAWA
• Transnational feminism

• Feldman, Shelley. "Exploring Theories of Patriarchy: A Perspective from Contemporary Bangladesh," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 25.4 (Summer 2001), p. 1108.
• Fonow, Mary Margret. "Human Rights, Feminism, and Transnational Labor Solidarity." Just Advocacy? Women's Human Rights,Transnational Feminisms, and the Politics of Representation. Ed. Wendy S. Hasford and Wendy Kozol. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2005. 221–43.
• Mendez, Jennifer Bickham. "Creating Alternatives from a Gender Perspective: Transnational Organizing for Maquila Workers' Rights in Central America". Women's Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics. Ed. Nancy A. Naples and Manisha Desai. New York: Routledge Press, 2002. 121–41.
• Brenner, Johanna (2003). "Transnational Feminism and The Struggle for Global Justice". New Politics. IX (2 (New Series)). Archived from the original on 17 April 2012. Retrieved 30 August 2012.

• Amnesty International
• Behind the Label at the Wayback Machine (archived May 28, 2007)
• Co-Op America
• feminist.com
• The Feminist Majority Foundation
• Global Exchange
• SweatFreeWorld
• UNITE HERE