Narsapur vs. America :: Feminism Feminist Essays

Narsapur vs. AmericaThis Womens Studies Senior Seminar class has provided the opportunity to read about many cross-cultural issues pertaining to women. In the article, Women Workers and Capitalist Scripts Ideologies of Domination, gross Interests, and the Politics of Solidarity by Chandra Talpade Mohanty, issues of poor women worker in the global capitalist arena (3) are addressed. Mohanty focuses on the plight of exploited, poor Third-World women. She illuminates specific issues that relate to the variation of developing countries to capitalism. Mohantys article is split up into sections, the section that I want to focus on in order to compare key issues in the midst of Narsapur and America is called Housewives and Homework The Lacemakers of Narsapur. In this specific article Mohanty illuminates the effects that capitalism has on areas that are being developed, she portrays its effects on women as well as men. In Narsapur the lace making industry skyrocketed between the year s 1970 and 1978. As a result of the increased demand, the process of making lace and the final product, which is lace, has been feminized trance the trade or exportation of the lace is viewed as business, as a masculinize activity. Women working outside the home in this culture are outlined as housewives, and so the job of being a lacemaker is specify as housework. Mohanty argues that the definition of women as housewives also suggests the heterosexualization of womens work - women are always defined in relation to men and conjugal marriage (12). As a result of the heterosexualization of womens work plus the feminization of the process and product and the virilization of the trade men sell womens products and live on profits from womens labor (12). I think there are similarities between the hegemony in Narsapur and in the United States. Our societys practices and treatment towards womens work and the treatment of womens work in Naraspur can be compared. One similitude i n the U.S. is the treatment of womens work outside of the job force. By sheer lack of acknowledgement, womens work inside the home is overlooked and hence not considered to be work at all. Work that receives no recognition is invisible and invisibility of work carries with it no economic power. American women are tranquilize perceived as primarily being housewives first, then they are doctors or lawyers or you can fill in the blank.