Parrenas Response

Parrenas’ article “Migrant Filipina Domestic Workers and the International Division of Reproductive Labor” expands the topic of women in reproductive labor from reproductive labor within one nation to an examination of it as a transnational system. Her article addresses what she deems as a “three-tier transfer of reproductive labor” (Parrenas, 561): middle-class Western women hire Filipina migrants for domestic work, while these same migrants hire poorer women in the Philippines for the same purpose. I truly liked this article, because I felt that it introduced a new aspect of reproductive labor that our other articles had not considered. Parrenas concludes by arguing that women’s work has not truly been evened out among men, but rather transferred to other women so that Western women can work outside the household: women now participate “…in the transnational transfer of gender constraints to less-privileged women” (577). I believe Parrenas’ article is so intriguing in part because it picks up on many issues Glenn – and our discussion on women in reproductive labor – overlooked. In Glenn’s focus on racial stratification of labor and much on migrants, she neglects to examine these women migrants themselves, and the background they come from. In this way, Glenn ignores an important part of women’s reproductive labor – the women who have began to replace the now career-bound Western middle class. I enjoyed reading this article because of the new perspective it took on this commonly held discussion of women’s work.