Assignment #3

One of the articles I would like to talk about is “Global Woman” written by Barbara Enrenreich and Arlie Dussell Hochschild. This article stood out to me because my mother was also an immigrant from mainland China to Hong Kong. Her reason that moving from China to Hong Kong was not raising children or support family, but it was for her own future. Working in Hong Kong earned much more than working in China. Similar to those immigrants mentioned in the article, working in rich countries could earn much more in poor countries. There is an example mentioned in the article, “In Hong Kong, for instance, the wages of a Filipina domestic are about fifteen times the amount she could make as a schoolteacher back in the Philippines.” It is true that even though women have good education in their own countries, they would choose to work as nannies or maids in other countries because of better pay. As my mother worked outside, my family hired a Filipino as a maid to help doing housework and raising children. This is what Enrenreich and Hochschild point out in the article that as women work outside not only want to do the fulltime job, but also keep thriving children and managing the home well; therefore, domestic workers and nannies are needed to help women doing all the things at home. The article could be applied to what Professor Messner talked in class about the knowledge grounded in male-female gendered division of labor. Women work outside and are the breadwinners of the families become more and more common in today’s world. In the past, people generally thought that male were the breadwinner, but in recently research, “women were the sole, primary, or coequal earners in more than half of American families (Gallinsky and Friedman 1995).” This trend changes the knowledge of the world grounded male-female gendered division of labor.
The second article I would like to talk about is “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” written by Audre Lorde. This article stood out to me because of the writer’s background. Lorde is a “forty-nine-year-old Black lesbian feminist socialist mother of two, including one boy, and a member of an interracial couple.” As being a minority, I do think that her point of view gives me new point of view in understanding the differences of age, race, class and sex. She points out, “Certainly there are very real differences between us of race, age, and sex. But it is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation.” I think this could be applied to Professor Messner mentioned in class about the knowledge grounder in intersectional division of labor. Lorde points out because of the different races, white women defines women “in term of their own experience alone, then women of Color become “other.” Lorde gives an example of only Colored women teaches the literature of women of Color. White women thought that Colored women are hard to understand because they are too different. In my point of view, the experiences grounded in “intersectional” social locations could explain why the white women have those “outsider” feelings.
I do think that "situated knowledge" is an impediment to seeing the world clearly. Professor Messner mentioned in class about the standpoint theory of knowledge that people’s knowledge is based on their own experiences, and also their experiences are grounded in their social locations. Thus, “situated knowledge” affects people’s point of view because people’s experiences will affect their opinions, and that is why they understand the world subjectively. Therefore, I do think that "situated knowledge" is an impediment to seeing the world clearly.