Exodus and Reconstruction: Working-Class Women at the Heart of Globalization

Examining the decline of traditional rural patriarchy, and the centrality of working-class women's exploitation and resistance in globalized capitalism.

'Family-based rural patriarchy was so deeply imbedded within capitalism for so long that abandoning it was nearly unthinkable. A change of such magnitude would require the development of much more advanced global transportation and commodity markets and a tremendous reorganization of labor. It would require a major overhaul of political systems everywhere. It would be a sea-change in capitalism.'

'That sea-change is what's happening now.'

'Traditional rural patriarchy based on family farming is finally, steadily, decisively, being crushed by global capital. It's impossible to overstate the consequences of this process for working-class women and for capitalism. The world's most profitable reservoir of productive labor--the basic working class, mostly women--is essentially being re-deployed in a radically new configuration.'