Towards a feminist and dialetic analysis of neoliberal globalization: the weight of the military-industrial complex on «global women»

Abstract

This article examines neoliberal globalization, especially labour market transformations, from a strong gender perspective — a perspective that means both a dialectic study of women and men's occupations, and developping an intersectional approach which weaves together sex, race and class relations. Firstly, the article presents the now classical analysis of global women (nannies, maids and sex workers) in the neoliberal world, suggesting that the growing numbers of global women, who are mainly migrant and unprivileged women of the world, can be characterized as "service women". Secondly, it studies the parallel growth of what I call "armed men", as a complementary trend of the labour market for men. The article suggests that men in arms are both creating and depending on service women, individually and collectively, as part of the military-industrial complex — and that this should be studied more thoroughly. Finally, I suggest that service women and armed men should be studied together, dialectically and historically, and constitute a new paradigm to study the transformation of the labour market caused by neoliberal globalization.