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Document Type

Symposium

Publication Date

Fall 1996

Publication Citation

4 Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 59 (1996)

Abstract

Professor Eisenstein's article discusses the effects of globalization on the

relationship between privatization and public responsibility and how this

dynamic impacts the future of women across the globe. She argues that the

global growth of privatization in the North and West has disseminated around

the world to the detriment of women. Privatization, she contends, has been

accepted as the agenda of politicians for the late twentieth century, and public

responsibility has been lost as a result.

According to Professor Eisenstein, globalization has been essentially an

economic process in which a global economy surfaces without differences or

borders. The global economy, however, fails to account for the divisions that

are left in its wake, dividing people along racial, ethnic, religious, and

gendered borders. The myth of "oneness" created by the global economy

displaces women into the established gender hierarchies of the North and

West, which continue to place the needs of women at the bottom of the global

marketplace.

Professor Eisenstein exemplifies her views by focusing on the export of

Western feminism to the rest of the world, the struggles of women in the South

and East who strive for progress in the face of restrictive global gender

hierarchies, and the problems facing the women of the former Yugoslavia.

The article concludes with Professor Eisenstein's suggestion that the

"Platform of Action," put forth at the UN. Fourth World Conference on

Women, be used as a basis for restructuring the public in a way that will make

marked progress toward improving the rights and status of women around the

world. The Platform is a basis for a feminist "publicness" that Professor

Eisenstein feels should be attempted as we close in on the twenty-first century.

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