Assignment 3

The two articles that I chose are the ones that I can relate to the most. Being a Chinese-Indonesian, I can relate to the article “Americans Have a Different Attitude: Family, Sexuality and Gender in Filipina American Lives.” Being immersed in an Eastern culture all my life, I have been raised to be have ‘strong family ties and collective identity’, to ‘fulfill (my) traditional roles as women: to get married and have children’, and ‘to be a virgin until I get married’. However, I feel like the article took some extreme examples and made a lot of generalizations. For example, although I can relate to the double standard for boys and girls and the fact that I was raised to fulfill my traditional roles, my parents always tried their best not to differentiate their children; they always tried to be fair. They are somehow more protective of their daughters, but I was still allowed to go out, date, or stay out late and take an out-of-town trip if they know who I am going with. They also always encourage me to pursue my education as high as possible and reach for my dreams, while still instilling in me a desire to be a good wife one day (not necessarily a housewife). Although different from the American culture, I think these forms of cultural resistance do not severely restrict women’s lives in my culture, depending on each family. To some extent they do, but from my observations I believe most of today’s Asian families have become more open-minded and not as restricting as depicted in the article.

The second article that stood out to me is “Global Woman” by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild. In Jakarta, Indonesia, almost every household has maids, nannies or domestic workers that come from the rural areas. Once I even had a nanny who had a nanny. In a sense, I experienced the ‘female underside of globalization’ first-hand. Since both my parents are working professionals, I grew up having a nanny whom I spent a lot of my time with. Just like some of the examples in the article most of the domestic workers who have worked at my house quit once they want to get married. Indonesia is also known to export domestic workers (and illegal prostitutes) to neighboring countries. Some of them get treated very badly by their masters; there have been many stories about abused domestic workers in foreign countries. These are some really heart-wrenching stories, to know how women who seriously wanted to work so they can obtain money for their families were abused. This truly shows the female underside of globalization, because although now women are on the move as never before, they have to leave their families behind and some of them even got abused. Although I was aware that these domestic workers who lived in my house were leaving their children behind, this article really opened up my eyes because I was raised to be used to this condition, as what the article deems as ‘early childhood education’… I believe this is still an issue in many parts of the world that needs to be addressed.

Regarding the question in Prof. Messner’s class, I believe that “situated knowledge” is an impediment in seeing the world clearly. For instance, my view as an Indonesian towards domestic workers was different than most Americans’, because my situated knowledge is different than theirs. Some people are more open-minded and some are less, but everyone has at least some degree of situated knowledge. Everyone’s view on something inevitably must be biased to a certain extent, depending on one’s culture, values, experiences, and beliefs. One can try his/her best to look at something fully objectively, but still it’s extremely difficult to take a broader look at the world 100% clearly and objectively.