Women & Change Chapter 7

Chapter seven titled “Domestic Service and International Networks of Caring Labor” by Doreen J. Mattingly has in-depth interviews from both domestic workers and their employees from San Diego, California where two very important issues are looked at. The first issue looks at the relationship between “social reproduction and women’s migration” (104). This is the further look and critical analysis of how these lower income women migrate to wealthy nations that have demands for these women service workers. The second issue examines the “complex connections” or gender, race/ethnicity, and nationality and how it shapes and is shaped by the institution of domestic servitude.
The general profile of the women and families that seek to employ these domestic workers are usually families that are of a high income, have been to college and/or received a college degree and they employ mostly women to do cooking, cleaning, but sometimes these duties extend further to taking care of the children and posing as nannies. Most of the women interviewed placed an emphasis on time. They don’t have time to do this and that or that employing women for these jobs helps them to save time. However in previous chapters we learned about women’s mobility so I wonder do these families ever think about what it takes for these migrant women to get these jobs locations which I can only imagine is a far distance.
In the section of chapter Immigration, Domestic Work, and Inequality hold description of how these domestic workers and their employers balance their own personal family lives. I thought it was interesting when it is said that most of the employers rely on the migrant and poor, low income women for childcare and the women who are domestic workers rely on relatives that are “poorly paid labor”. Mattingly suggests that these childcare strategies are both connected however, they are interdependent also. It is said that “they strategies these two groups of women use to access additional caring labor also construct and reinforce difference, as evidenced by the way different responsibilities and resources of young women in the two groups of households “ (120). I think that these women may feel that they are totally different however they share some of the same complications of being women who work. Although their experiences may be different, incomes/wages, and living arrangements they should realize how similar they are. I wonder if they even do.

Women and Change at the U.S.-Mexico Border pg 3-16

The book “Women and Change at the U.S.- Mexico Border” by Doreen J. Mattingly and Ellen R. Hansen opens up with speaking about the roles such as family life and working in factories, home life, etc. for the women who work in cities along the U.S.-Mexico boarder. They say that these women are apart of a larger force. They are apart of a movement. The chapters in the book helped the reader though stories learn about these women's experiences which include genders as a changing social construct, how gender is still a challenge in which these women must negotiate when working in these factories and raising families, and also that the U.S.-Mexico boarder is a type of window that allow a way in which women will cross boundaries if not physically but mentally.
Section one of book titled Women’s Mobility speak of gendered roles for men and women and that geographic mobility it in fact effected by gender. Through the different chapters in the section one will learn how migration effects indigenous women along the boarder, also how mobility is gendered through the division of labor- the reality is that men and women hold different jobs and have a different set of responsibilities and obligations.
The next section is about Labor and Empowerment in the Boarder Region it is said that a woman being employed is a “catch-22” or a “double-edged sword”. This section also offers theories to the reasoning of why industrialization has gendered impact.
In the last section titled Activist Women Changing the Border touches on how working conditions are for these women and problems and reasons why they choose to cross the border. Some reasons has been that there is a development of colnias at a very staggering rate creating new communities along the border. These women became activists due to the needs that we not reached in the lower-income communities. Also these women have formed NGO’s which are like unions.