## 1. What is Globalization?


### 1.1 Economic Globalization



Economic globalization refers to the processes of global economic
integration that emerged in the late 20th century, fueled
by neoliberal ideals. Rooted in classical liberal economic thought,
neoliberalism claims that a largely unregulated capitalist economy
embodies the ideal of free individual choice and maximizes economic
efficiency and growth, technological progress, and distributive
justice. Economic globalization is associated with particular global
political and economic institutions, such as the World Trade
Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, and
specific neoliberal economic policies, such as the following:


* *Trade liberalization*. Free trade policies, such as the
United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (also known as the New NAFTA),
seek to integrate regional or global markets by reducing trade
barriers among nations. Signatory countries typically agree to
eliminate tariffs, such as duties and surcharges, as well as nontariff
obstacles to trade, such as licensing regulations, quotas on imports,
and subsidies to domestic producers.
* *Deregulation*. Trade liberalization is associated with the
easing of restrictions on capital flow and investment, along with the
elimination of government regulations that can be seen as unfair
barriers to trade, including legal protections for workers, consumers,
and the environment.
* *Privatization of public assets*. Economic globalization is
marked by the sale of state-owned enterprises, goods, and services to
private investors in the name of expanding markets and increasing
efficiency. Such assets include banks, key industries, highways and
railroads, power and electricity, education, and healthcare.
Privatization often also involves the sale of publicly owned,
economically exploitable natural resources, such as water, minerals,
forests, and land, to private investors.
* *Elimination of social welfare programs*. Neoliberalism
favors sharp reductions in public expenditures for social services,
such as housing, health care, education, and disability and
unemployment insurance, as a crucial means of reducing the role of
government and making private businesses more efficient. Structural
Adjustment Policies (SAPs) have been instrumental in requiring
countries in the global South to eliminate social welfare spending.
Since the early 1980s, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund
have required debtor nations to adopt SAPs as a condition of borrowing
money or improving conditions of existing loans. SAPs require debtor
nations to restructure their economies along neoliberal lines, by, for
example, removing government regulation, eliminating social welfare
programs, and promoting market competition.
* *Restrictions on immigration*. While many countries have
liberalized capital markets and eased barriers to transnational trade
in goods and services under globalization, most have not eliminated
barriers to the flow of labor. Indeed, some affluent countries, such
as the United States, have implemented more restrictive immigration
policies, leading to the detention and deportation of thousands of
undocumented immigrants and the militarization of national borders.
Despite these restrictions, however, migration has increased along
with other processes of globalization.



Political philosophers are concerned with the effects of these
policies on human well-being. Proponents of globalization claim that
economic liberalization has enabled many people throughout the world
to move out of conditions of dire poverty. Open markets, they argue,
have increased employment and productivity within developing
countries, raising the standard of living and enhancing the well-being
of the people living within them (Diamandis and Kotler 2012, Friedman
2012, Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2000, O'Neil 2013). Critics
point out that neoliberal policies have created the widest gap between
the very rich and very poor in history, with unprecedented wealth for
the rich and poverty and destitution for millions of the global poor
(Nikiforuk 2007, Pogge 2002). Feminists have pointed out that pockets
of highly concentrated wealth in the "global South" and
the high levels of extreme poverty in the "global North"
mean that we cannot divide the world neatly along North/South or
rich/poor lines (Silvey 2014). However, on the whole, they argue,
globalization has benefitted the world's wealthiest
people--both citizens of the global North and the elite in
developing countries--without substantially benefitting the
majority of the world's population.



Feminist philosophers insist that economic globalization must also be
understood in terms of the effects it has had on women, who make up a
disproportionate percentage of the global poor. Most agree that these
effects have been primarily negative. For instance, Jaggar argues that
globalization has promised many things that are crucial to feminists:
peace, prosperity, social justice, environmental protection, the
elimination of racism and ethnocentrism, and, of course, an increase
in the status of women. However, neoliberal policies have brought
about the opposite of these aspirations. Rather than peace, they have
created conditions for war and increased militarism; rather than
prosperity and social justice, they have increased the gulf between
the rich and the poor; rather than environmental protection, they have
led to the privatization and destruction of publicly-owned natural
resources; and rather than eliminating racist, ethnocentric, and
sexist barriers, globalization has been, ultimately, "a system
hostile or antagonistic to women" (Jaggar 2001, 301).


### 1.2 Political Globalization



Although political and economic globalization are interconnected and
mutually reinforcing, they differ in significant ways. Political
globalization refers to changes in the exercise of political power
that have resulted from increased transnational engagement. Prior to
World War II, the international political system was understood in
terms of the so-called Westphalian model. According to this model,
political power is exercised primarily through governance at the level
of the territorial state. The international political system is
comprised of sovereign states, which enjoy a monopoly on political
power within their own territories. International treaties govern
relations among states; however, states generally cannot legitimately
intervene in the domestic affairs of other nations. Thus, when
problems, such as famines, genocides, and civil wars arise, they are
seen primarily as security issues for individual states, not matters
of justice affecting the global community (Fraser 2013).



In contrast to this state-centric model, political globalization must
be understood as *polycentric*, that is, as involving non-state
institutions that exercise political power from both
"above" and "below" the state (So 2010). The
development of supra-national institutions, such as the United
Nations, the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization,
the European Union, NATO, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,
and others, can be understood as political "globalization from
above." These institutions create international rules that
constrain the sovereignty of states, in some cases, through
enforcement mechanisms that penalize for noncompliance. In addition to
holding states accountable for adhering to mutually agreed upon norms
and standards, global institutions often set the agendas that
determine which issues receive international attention. Institutions
such as the UN and EU have sought to draw attention to some of the
injustices experienced by women around the world, such as sexual
violence, lack of educational access, and other women's human
rights violations, and to develop global frameworks for addressing
them. However, many feminist philosophers argue that supra-national
institutions have had limited success in protecting the world's
most vulnerable people. Most global institutions privilege Western and
corporate interests over those of vulnerable and marginalized people,
and few have been successful in challenging the structural
inequalities that give rise to gendered harms, such as deprivation,
discrimination, and violence. 



For many feminists, the transnational political movements that have
emerged "from below" the state offer a more promising
dimension of political globalization. The expansion of global
communications has led to the development of new transnational
political networks, comprised of individuals, non-governmental
organizations, and social movements. These transnational networks,
sometimes referred to as "global civil society," connect
millions of people around the world based on shared political
commitments. Consequently, some feminist philosophers believe that
political "globalization from below" provides women and
other vulnerable people with an effective means for resisting the
inequalities created by economic globalization. For instance, some
feminists argue that globalization has created new transnational
public spheres in which political opinion can be marshaled to hold
leaders democratically accountable (Fraser 2009, Gould 2009). This
transnational public sphere must be understood both in terms of
physical locations, such as home, factory, and village, as well as
technologically mediated spaces made possible by the internet; such
modes of communication form a new layer of transnational space that
allows people to build horizontal networks and communities (Youngs
2005). Others see the promise of political globalization in
transnational feminist solidarity networks, such as the women's
rights are human rights campaign and groups combating sex trafficking,
global care chains, and labor exploitation that enable feminist
resistance to dominant political and economic forces (Copelon 2003,
Gallegos 2017, Hochschild 2000, 2002, Kittay, 2008, 2009, Parekh 2009,
Robinson 2003, Stamatopoulou 1995, Walby 2002, Weir 2005). 



Given the complexity of globalization, how have feminist political
philosophers addressed the social, political, and economic challenges
posed by it? Below, we provide an overview of several feminist
theoretical approaches to this task.


## 2. Feminist Theoretical Approaches to Globalization



'Feminist theoretical approaches to globalization' is an
umbrella term that refers to a number of specific theoretical
approaches that feminists have used to articulate the challenges that
globalization poses for women, people of color, and the global poor.
These various approaches include those developed by postcolonial
feminists, transnational feminists, and feminists who endorse an
ethics of care. In this section, we identify four key features shared
by these various feminist approaches to globalization and outline some
of the distinctive characteristics of each theoretical
orientation.


### 2.1 Key Common Features



First, feminist approaches to globalization seek to provide frameworks
for understanding the gender injustices associated with globalization.
Rather than developing all-encompassing ideal theories of global
justice, however, feminist philosophers tend to adopt the non-ideal
theoretical perspectives, which focus on specific, concrete issues.
Early feminist analyses focused on issues that were widely believed to
be of particular importance to women around the world, such as
domestic violence, workplace discrimination, and human rights
violations against women. While gendered analyses of these issues have
provided valuable insights into the distinctive nature of the harms
involved, many feminist philosophers view this approach as too narrow,
both in terms of the specific issues it addresses and its
methodological approach to these issues. They contend that even
apparently gender-neutral global issues often have a gendered
dimension, including war, global governance, migration, southern debt,
the "resource curse," and climate change. Moreover, by
addressing specific global "women's issues" as
independent phenomena, early feminist analyses failed to take into
account the systematic and structural gendered injustices associated
with neoliberalism. Although gender oppression takes different forms
in different social, cultural, and geographical locations, women in
every society face systematic disadvantages, such as those resulting
from their socially assigned responsibility for domestic work (Lange
2009). Because of these structural injustices, women of all
nationalities tend to suffer more from the poverty, overwork,
deprivation, and political marginalization associated with neoliberal
policies. Thus, more recent feminist analyses of globalization tend to
understand the outcomes of globalization not as disparate or
contingent phenomena, but rather as a result of systematic, structural
injustices on a global scale. Indeed, some contend that the global
basic structure itself is implicitly biased against women (Jaggar
2009a).



The second key feature of feminist approaches to globalization is a
shared commitment to core feminist values, including an opposition to
the subordination of women. Some theorists also draw upon feminist
interpretations of mainstream moral and political ideals, such as
equality, democracy, and human rights, to develop critiques of
neoliberal policies. For instance, Jaggar appeals to liberal
democratic norms to argue that many southern debt obligations are not
morally binding because their citizenries were "largely
uninformed and/or their options were virtually non-existent"
when they undertook these supposed debts (Jaggar 2002a, 433). Many
feminists also use the language of human rights to address the
challenges of globalization. While they acknowledge that traditional
understandings of human rights are implicitly male-biased, they
contend that feminist rearticulations of these norms can help to
identify the gendered harms involved in sexual slavery, forced
domestic labor, and the systematic withholding of education, food, and
healthcare from women and girls that follow from severe economic
deprivation (Bunch 2006, Cudd 2005, Jaggar 2002a, Nussbaum 2001,
Robinson 2004, Okin 1998, Reilly 2007). (See Section 3.3 below.)



However, not all feminist political philosophers agree with this
approach. Some believe that new feminist ideals, such as relational
understandings of power, collective responsibility, and mutual
dependence, are needed to diagnose the gender injustices associated
with globalization (Hankivsky 2006, Held 2004, 2007, Kittay 2008,
2009, Miller 2006, 2011, Robinson 2006, 2010, Weir 2008a, 2008b, Young
2011). For instance, Iris Marion Young argues the traditional ideal
theories of justice are unable to account for the unjust background
conditions that contribute to the development of sweatshops in the
global South. She argues that a new relational model of
responsibility, which she calls the social connection model, is needed
to articulate the obligations that people in affluent northern
countries have to workers in the global South. The social connection
model holds that individuals bear responsibility for structural
injustices, such as those suffered by workers on the global assembly
line, because our actions contribute to the institutional processes
that produce such injustices. In particular, northern consumers have a
responsibility to organize collectively to reform the injustices
associated with sweatshop labor (Young 2011).



The third key feature of feminist approaches to globalization is an
emphasis on feminist methodologies. In particular, these approaches
tend to embody three key methodological commitments. The first is
intersectionality, which maintains that systems of oppression interact
to produce injustices, and thus, that gender injustices cannot be
understood solely in terms of sex or gender. Feminists who theorize
about justice on the domestic level argue that women's
experiences of gender oppression are shaped by other forms of
oppression, such as those based on race, class, disability, and sexual
orientation. Feminist theorists of globalization contend that gender
oppression interacts with these systems of oppression, along with
other forms of systematic disadvantage that arise within the global
context. Salient categories include nationality, geographical
location, citizenship status, and socioeconomic position within the
global economy (for instance, as a Southern elite, a Western laborer,
or a worker on the global assembly line). Given this broad conception
of intersectionality, feminist theorists of globalization insist that
gender injustices arise within specific transnational contexts, such
as historical relationships among nations and current global economic
policies. 



The second methodological commitment shared by feminist approaches to
globalization is a sensitivity to context and concrete specificity.
Feminist philosophers strive to accurately reflect the diverse
interests, experience, and concerns of women throughout the world, and
to take seriously differences in culture, history, and socio-economic
and political circumstances. In this way, feminist approaches to
globalization attempt to move between local conditions and global
pressures, between historical realities and contemporary experiences
of oppression and vulnerability, while being attentive to complex
interactions among social, economic, and political forces. This has
led some feminist theorists of globalization to distinguish their
views from well-known feminists, such as Martha Nussbaum and Susan
Okin, whom Ackerly and Attanasi refer to as "international
feminists" by virtue of their methodological commitments. In
their view, Nussbaum and Okin do not pay sufficient attention to the
ways that justice and injustice are mediated by local conditions in
their attempts to identify universal moral ideals. As a result, their
theories tend to privilege Western perspectives and undermine their
own commitment to reflecting women's lived experience (Ackerly
and Attanasi 2009).



Finally, feminist theorists of globalization are committed to
developing self-reflexive critiques. At the heart of this methodology
is a willingness to critically examine feminist claims, with
particular attention to the ways in which feminist discourses
privilege certain points of view. For instance, Schutte insists that
ostensibly universal feminist values and ideas are likely to embody
the values of dominant cultures. This helps to explain why the voices
of women from developing countries are often taken seriously only if
they reflect the norms and values of the West and conform to Western
expectations. Thus, Schutte insists that feminists must engage in
methodological practices that de-center their habitual standpoints and
foreground perspectives that challenge accepted ways of thinking
(Schutte 2002). Khader extends this call, urging transnational
feminists to reject the problematic variants of "Enlightenment
liberal" values taken to be central to Western feminism,
including individualism, autonomy, and gender-role eliminativism
(Khader 2019, 3). Such values not only constitute cultural imperialism
when imposed on cultural "others," as Schutte argues, but
also can serve to justify militarism, political domination, economic
exploitation, and white supremacy in the name of advancing gender
interests (Khader 2019). Ackerly argues that feminist theory can be
used not only to critique feminist ideals and values, but also to
develop richer ways to evaluate the work done by women's human
rights organizations. Feminist theory is able to engage with, shape
and be shaped by the work being done "on the ground" by
NGOs and other groups (Ackerly 2009). 



The struggle to develop feminist theories that embody these
methodological commitments has been ongoing for feminists. In the
1980s, Chandra Talpade Mohanty observed that Western feminist
scholarship tends to adopt an ethnocentric perspective, depicting
so-called Third-World women as one-dimensional, non-agentic, and
homogenous. In her often-cited words, such scholarship tends to
suggest that:



> 
> the average Third World woman leads an essentially truncated life
> based on her feminine gender (read: sexually constrained) and her
> being "Third World" (read: ignorant, poor, uneducated,
> tradition-bound, domestic, family-oriented, victimized, etc.). This, I
> suggest, is in contrast to the (implicit) self-representation of
> Western women as educated, as modern, as having control over their own
> bodies and sexualities and the freedom to make their own decisions
> (Mohanty 2003, 22).
> 



Mohanty claims that this perspective leads to a simplistic
understanding of what feminists in Western countries can do to
"help" women in developing nations. Many of the recent
developments in the feminist literature on globalization can be
understood as a response to this theoretical failure. In addition to
recognizing the ways in which power influences the production of
feminist theories, feminist critics of globalization strive to
understand the ways in which Western women share responsibility for
gender injustices in developing countries and at home, and to
articulate their obligations to eliminate these injustices.


### 2.2 Distinctive Feminist Approaches



Despite these common aims and methodological commitments, feminists
have analyzed globalization from a number of different theoretical
perspectives. Below, we examine three prominent approaches to
globalization, developed by postcolonial and decolonial,
transnational, and ethics of care feminists. Although it is not
possible to draw sharp boundaries around these theoretical
perspectives, we identify some distinctive features of each.


#### 2.2.1 Postcolonial and Decolonial Feminisms



Postcolonial and decolonial feminisms offer primarily critical
theoretical frameworks, which analyze globalization within the context
of the history of Western colonialism and imperialism. They begin with
the claim that Western colonialism and imperialism have played
important roles in shaping the contemporary world, and highlight their
enduring effects on global relations and local cultural practices.
Although postcolonial and decolonial feminists write from all over the
world, they foreground non-Eurocentric epistemic standpoints and
criticize North-South power asymmetries from the diverse perspectives
of members of Indigenous communities and people in the global South
(Herr 2013, Khader 2019, McLaren 2017, Schutte 2002, 2005). 



Postcolonial and decolonial feminists make several important claims.
First, they insist that it is impossible to understand local practices
in developing countries without acknowledging the ways in which these
practices have been shaped by their economic and historical contexts,
particularly their connection to Western colonialism and imperialism.
Moreover, they warn that attempts to explain the suffering of women in
developing countries in simplistic terms often tend to reproduce a
"colonial stance" toward the global South. For instance,
as we explained above, Chandra Mohanty sees elements of imperialism in
Western feminist scholarship on women in the global South. Similarly,
Uma Narayan criticize feminists for unwittingly adopting a Eurocentric
perspective. For example, some Western feminist scholars, such as Mary
Daly, strongly criticize cultural practices, such as sati, the Indian
practice of widow immolation, as self-evidently wrong. However,
Narayan argues that approaching sati as an isolated, local phenomenon
fundamentally misrepresents it. Understanding sati in the context of
colonial history provides a richer analysis of this practice, since it
gained its symbolic power during British rule as an emblem of Hindu
and Indian culture (Narayan 1997). Highlighting the role that
colonialism has played in shaping local practices enables feminists to
avoid adopting a Eurocentric perspective. Likewise, postcolonial and
decolonial feminists insist that any feminist analysis of the harms of
globalization must take seriously the history and ongoing cultural,
economic, and political effects of colonialism and imperialism.



Postcolonial and decolonial feminists further argue that although
traditional forms of colonialism have formally ended, many aspects of
globalization are best understood as neo-colonial practices. As Sally
Scholz explains:



> 
> Multinational corporations and global businesses, largely centered in
> Western nations, bring their own colonizing influence through business
> models, hegemonic culture, exploitation of workers, and displacement
> of traditional trades. Whereas traditional forms of colonialism
> entailed the colonizer assuming the privilege of ruling the colony,
> this neocolonialism rules indirectly through the power it creates and
> enjoys by bringing manufacturing jobs to an area or providing consumer
> goods to a people - often Western inspired consumer goods as
> well. Old style colonialism often killed or displaced indigenous
> peoples; the new style of colonialism impoverishes a culture by
> swamping society with Western values, products or ideals (2010, 139).
> 



More broadly, postcolonial and decolonial feminists observe that many
of the conditions created by colonialism--economic inequality and
exploitation, racism, cultural marginalization, and the domination of
the global South by the global North--have been sustained and
intensified by neoliberalism. Moreover, they argue, neoliberal
policies and institutions systematically favor countries in the global
North to the detriment of southern nations. International trade
policies serve Western interests even while claiming to be politically
neutral and fair. Global economic institutions also privilege Western
culture and political norms, presenting them as models for the rest of
the world, while ignoring and marginalizing the claims of
women's and indigenous movements in the global South as well as
settler nations (Weendon 2002). Since appeals to so-called universal
concepts, epistemologies, and values, such as freedom, rights, and
autonomy, can be used to further imperialist projects, postcolonial
and decolonial feminists seek to develop normative positions that
criticize neoliberal and neocolonial practices while rejecting
problematic ethnocentric ideals that often masquerade as universal
(Alcoff 2017, Khader, 2019, McLaren 2017, Pohlhaus Jr. 2017, Weir
2017).


#### 2.2.2 Ethics of Care



Another prominent school of feminist theoretical responses to
globalization puts care, both caring labor--the work of caring
for the young, old, sick, and disabled, and the everyday maintenance
of households--and the moral ideal of care, at the center of its
analyses. Proponents of this approach begin by observing that most
mainstream analyses of globalization either ignore or devalue care.
This is problematic, they argue, for at least three reasons: (1) care
work, which is done almost exclusively by women, has been profoundly
influenced by globalization; (2) the values and work associated with
care are both undervalued and insufficiently supported, and this
contributes to gender, racial, and economic inequality, both within
countries and between the global North and the global South; and (3)
any viable alternative to neoliberal globalization must prioritize the
moral ideal of care. Thus, ethics of care approaches to globalization
have both theoretical and practical dimensions.



Theoretically, ethics of care feminists aim to provide a systematic
critique of neoliberal assumptions and develop moral ideals capable of
guiding more just forms of globalization. In their view, neoliberalism
presupposes a problematic notion of the self, which posits individuals
as atomistic, independent, and self-interested, and an inaccurate
social ontology, which suggests that human relationships are formed by
choice rather than necessity or dependency. These assumptions lead
neoliberalism to prioritize economic growth, efficiency, and profit
making over other values, such as equality, human rights, and care.
Ethics of care feminists reject these assumptions. In their view,
human beings are fundamentally relational and interdependent;
individuals are defined, indeed *constituted*, by their caring
relationships. All persons experience long periods during which their
lives literally depend on the care of others, and everyone needs some
degree of care in order flourish. Thus, vulnerability, dependency, and
need should be understood not as deficits or limitations, but rather
as essential human qualities requiring an adequate political
response.



Ethics of care feminists contend that relational values, including
care, should form the basis of more just forms of globalization. In
Hankivsky's view, a global ethics of care begins with three
assumptions: "1) care is considered to be a fundamental aspect
of all human life; 2) all human beings are interdependent by virtue of
being part of ongoing relations of care; and 3) 'people are
entitled to care because they are part of ongoing relations of
care'" (9). Because a global care ethics begins with a
relational ontology, it requires global political leaders to develop
social and economic policies that aim to meet human needs and reduce
suffering rather than to expand markets and increase economic
competition (Hankivsky 2006). Held endorses a similar view. According
to her, an ethic of care requires leaders to foster a global economy
that is capable of meeting universal human needs (Held 2004, 2007).
Similarly, Miller advocates a "global duty to care," which
requires individuals to take responsibility for their role in
contributing to global oppression, and obligates leaders to advocate
for institutions that embody the moral value of care (Miller
2006).



Concretely, feminist theorists who favor an ethics of care approach
highlight the role of care work in the global economy and put forth
recommendations for reevaluating it. For example, Robinson develops a
relational moral ontology that sheds lights on the features of
globalization that are usually invisible: the global distribution of
care work and the corresponding patterns of gender and racial
inequality; the under-provision of public resources for care work in
both developed and developing countries; and the ways in which unpaid
or low-paid care work sustains cycles of exploitation and inequality
on a global scale (Robinson 2006a, 2006b). Similarly, Held advocates
for increased state support of various forms of care work and for
policies designed to meet people's needs in caring ways (Held
2004, 2007).


#### 2.2.3 Transnational Feminism



In its broadest sense, transnational feminism maintains that
globalization has created the conditions for feminist solidarity
across national borders. On the one hand, globalization has enabled
transnational processes that generate injustices for women in multiple
geographical locations, such the global assembly line (discussed
below). Yet on the other, the technologies associated with
globalization have created new political spaces that enable feminist
political resistance. Thus, transnational feminists incorporate the
critical insights of postcolonial, Third World and ethics of care
feminists into a positive vision of transnational feminist solidarity.




Transnational feminism is sometimes contrasted with global or
international feminism, a second-wave theory that emphasizes
solidarity among women across national boundaries based on their
common experience of patriarchal oppression. However, transnational
feminism differs from global feminism in at least three significant
respects. 



First, transnational feminism is sensitive to differences among women.
Global feminists argue that patriarchy is universal; women across the
globe have a common experience of gender oppression. They promote the
recognition of a "global sisterhood" based on these shared
experiences, which transcends differences in race, class, sexuality,
and national boundaries. This solidarity is thought to provide a
unified front against global patriarchy. Transnational feminists also
advocate for solidarity across national boundaries. However, their
approach emphasizes the methodological commitments discussed above,
specifically intersectionality, sensitivity to concrete specificity,
and self-reflexivity. Transnational feminists are careful to point out
that although globalizing processes affect everyone, they affect
different women very differently, based on their geographical and
social locations. They are also quick to acknowledge that many aspects
of globalization may benefit some women while unduly burdening many
others. 



Second, transnational feminist solidarity is political in nature.
Whereas global feminists advocate a form of social solidarity defined
on the basis of characteristics shared by all women, such as a common
gender identity or experience of patriarchal oppression, transnational
feminist solidarity is grounded in the political commitments of
individuals, such as the commitment to challenge injustice or
oppression. Because transnational feminist solidarity is based on
shared political commitments rather than a common identity or uniform
set of experiences, advantaged individuals, including those who have
benefited from injustice, can join in solidarity with those who have
experienced injustice or oppression directly (Ferguson 2009, Scholz
2008). The emphasis on shared political commitments also enables
feminists to resist oppressive conditions that manifest differently in
different geographical locations but are nonetheless prevalent in many
countries, such as racialized violence against women (Khader 2019,
44-48). 



Third, transnational feminists focus on specific globalizing
processes, such as the growth of offshore manufacturing, rather than a
theorized global patriarchy, and often take existing transnational
feminist collectives as a model for their theoretical accounts of
solidarity. For instance, Ann Ferguson argues that anti-globalization
networks, such as worker-owned cooperatives, labor unions, fair trade
organizations, and land reform movements, are creating the conditions
for North-South women's coalition movements based on
non-essentialist political commitments to global gender justice
(Ferguson, 2009; see also Kang 2008, Khader 2019, Mendoza, 2002,
Vargas, 2003).


## 3. Issues



In addition to analyzing the gendered dimensions of globalization,
feminist political philosophers discuss specific issues that have been
shaped by it. Below, we discuss four representative examples. First,
we discuss two issues associated with economic
globalization--economic justice and migration--and then we
turn to two issues connected to political globalization--human
rights and global governance.


### 3.1 Economic Justice



It is widely argued that neoliberal policies have created dramatic
economic inequalities, both between the global North and global South
and within countries in both hemispheres. One task for feminist
political philosophers has been to identify the ways in which these
policies reinforce specific inequalities based on gender, class, race,
and nationality. In particular, feminists shed light on the disparate
and often disproportionately burdensome consequences of neoliberal
policies for specific groups of women. An additional, related task has
been to identify the ways in which gendered practices and ideologies
shape the processes of globalization. 



Free trade policies feature prominently in such feminist critiques.
Trade liberalization has led to the wide-scale movement of once
well-paying manufacturing jobs in the global North to low wage, export
processing or free trade zones in the global South. In the global
North, the pressure on companies to "outsource" jobs to
countries where labor is cheaper and working conditions are less
regulated has meant that many of the workers who once relied on
well-paying manufacturing jobs are now unable to make a living. These
jobs have largely been replaced by contingent and part-time
service-sector jobs, which tend to be poorly paid and lack health and
retirement benefits. The corresponding reduction in real wages has had
a disproportionate effect on women, and especially women of color, who
hold a higher share of service-sector jobs (Jaggar 2001, 2002a). 



In the global South, foreign-owned manufacturing and assembly
production facilities have proliferated in free trade zones, forming
what is often referred to as the "global assembly line."
Historically, foreign-dominated industrial expansion has meant more
jobs for men; however, it is primarily women who comprise the new,
"international, industrial proletariat" working on the
global assembly line. Gendered and racial stereotypes have played an
important role in the establishing this gendered division of labor. In
particular, employers tend to perceive women, particularly Asian
women, as "tractable, hard-working, dexterous--and
sexy" (Jaggar 2001, 305). Governments have been quick to
capitalize on these perceptions in their efforts to recruit foreign
investment.



Proponents of globalization argue that the expansion of export
processing has had positive consequences for women, providing jobs for
thousands of otherwise unemployed women and offering new forms of
agency. However, feminist political philosophers argue that jobs on
the global assembly line tend to be difficult, insecure, and
dangerous: working conditions are poor, hours are long, wages are low,
and sexual harassment is widespread (Young 2007, 164-67). Thus,
they contend, the results for women are contradictory at best. As
Jaggar argues, while women's increased economic power may
provide them with some freedom within their families, they are also
"super-exploited by foreign corporations with the collusion of
their own governments. As employees, they often experience a type of
labor control that is almost feudal in its requirement of subservience
and dependence" (Jaggar 2001, 306).



Trade liberalization policies have also allowed affluent, northern
countries to sell heavily subsidized agricultural products in southern
markets, leading to the decline of small-scale and subsistence
farming. Many of the female farmers who have been pushed off their
land have sought employment in export-processing zones or as seasonal
laborers, at lower wages than their male counterparts. Others have
found poorly paid and often dangerous jobs in the informal economy
(Jaggar 2001, 2002a).



Feminist political philosophers are also concerned with the gendered
effects of structural adjustment policies (SAPs), which many poor
countries have been forced to undertake as conditions of borrowing
money or rescheduling their existing debts. The resulting reductions
in publicly-funded health services, education, and childcare undermine
the health and well-being of everyone they affect. However, the
burdens of SAPs are disproportionately borne by women. Cuts in public
health services have contributed to a rise in maternal mortality. The
introduction of school fees has made education unavailable to poorer
children, especially to girls, leading to higher school dropout rates
for girls in many southern countries (Kittay 2008). Cuts to other
publicly funded social services also disproportionately harm women,
whose care-giving responsibilities make them more reliant on these
programs. Because austerity programs decrease public support for women
and increase women's workload, programs like these put women at
greater risk for some mental health disorders (Gosselin 2014).



More broadly, SAPs have contributed to increases in poverty and
unemployment in developing countries, placing additional burdens on
women within both the household and the public sphere. In times of
economic difficulty, men tend to maintain their expenditures, while
women are expected to make ends meet with fewer resources.
Consequently, women have had to develop survival strategies for their
families, often picking up the caregiving labor that is no longer
provided by the state. Women also face intensified pressure to earn
income outside the home. Some women who have been unable to find
adequate employment in their own countries have turned to labor
migration, which we discuss below. Sex work, including child
prostitution, has also increased under these conditions (Schutte
2002). 



Brock argues that reforming the international tax regime is a matter
of global gender justice. In her view, global gender justice arises
only when all people are able to meet their basic needs, have equal
protection for basic liberties, and enjoy fair terms of cooperation in
collective endeavors. Because properly funded social and political
institutions are a precondition of gender justice, a fair system of
international taxation and just accounting practices is needed to
achieve it. Although the claim that international taxation is a
requirement of global gender justice might initially seem odd, Brock
argues that a fair international tax regime is necessary to prevent
the harms that women in the global South suffer when public services
are underfunded. In her view, all corporations should pay their fair
share of taxes so countries can fund education, infrastructure
development, and programs that promote gender equity. Tax havens which
allow corporations to evade paying their taxes--so much so that
for every dollar of aid that flows into a country, six to seven
dollars of corporate taxes are evaded--must be eliminated.
Without such reforms, we must conclude that the basic institutional
structure of the global economy remains unjust and detrimental to
women (Brock 2014).


### 3.2 Migration



Migration has accelerated along with the globalization of the economy
and women comprise a higher proportion of migrants, especially labor
migrants, and refugees than ever before. Feminist philosophical
responses to the feminization of migration fall into three general
lines of argument. Early work in this area highlights the ways in
which gender, race, class, culture, and immigration status intersect
to produce disproportionate burdens for immigrant women. Subsequent
work discusses the feminization of labor migration, with a focus on
domestic workers. Finally, more recent contributions explore the
relationship between transnational migration and various forms of
structural oppression.



Early work by feminist philosophers typically argues that in sexist,
racist, and class-divided societies, such as the United States,
formally gender-neutral immigration policies often work to the
detriment of immigrant women (Narayan 1995, Wilcox 2005). For
instance, Uma Narayan argues that U.S. immigration legislation, such
as the Immigration Marriage Fraud Amendment (IMFA) heightens immigrant
women's vulnerability to domestic violence. Before the IMFA was
adopted, when a citizen or legal permanent resident married a
foreigner and petitioned for permanent residency status for his
spouse, legal residency was granted fairly quickly. The IMFA changed
this process, adding a two-year period of "conditional
residency," during which the couple must remain married, and
requiring both spouses to petition for adjustment to permanent
residency status at the end of this waiting period. Narayan argues
that the IMFA increases the already significant barriers to escaping
abusive marriages for immigrant women because it ties immigration
status to marriage. This is especially problematic because immigrant
women are generally "economically, psychologically, and
linguistically dependent on their spouses" (Narayan 1995,
106).



More recent approaches to the feminization of global migration focus
on what Arlie Hochschild refers to as "global care chains"
(Hochschild 2000, 2002) These chains, which link women across the
world, are established through the transnational exchange of domestic
services. Global care chains typically begin when relatively well-off
northern or Western women enter the paid labor force and hire other
women, usually poorer women from developing countries, to care for
their children and other dependents. Migrant careworkers often must
leave their own children behind in their home countries to be cared
for by even poorer careworkers or family members who may already have
care-giving responsibilities or be engaged with paid labor. Many
factors have contributed to the production of global care chains. In
wealthy countries, the entry of women into the paid workforce, without
corresponding increases in public provisions for childcare or the
redistribution of caring responsibilities between genders, has created
a high demand for paid domestic labor. In poor countries, the supply
of domestic labor has been stimulated by a scarcity of well-paying
jobs and in many cases, a growing reliance on remittances. Cuts in
public services in southern countries have also encouraged women to
migrate as a means for earning the income they need to pay for private
services for their children, such as healthcare and education (Kittay,
2008, 2009).



Global care chains raise difficult issues for feminists, over and
above those raised by the background injustices that help to generate
them. In particular, some northern women are able to take advantage of
increased opportunities in the paid workforce only because southern
women take up their socially-assigned domestic work, leaving their own
families in the care of others. Global care chains also contribute to
a larger, neo-colonial process - a "global care
drain," in which care is systematically extracted from people in
poor countries and transferred to individuals in affluent nations
(Hochschild 2002). 



Feminist analyses of care chains typically argue that traditional
theories of justice have difficulty articulating the precise nature of
the harms or injustices involved in these phenomena. Most theories of
global justice focus on unjust distributions of benefits and burdens
among nations; however, it is not clear that care should be understood
as a distributive good. Other features of care chains also resist
traditional ethical evaluation. Careworkers are not overtly coerced to
migrate, and each party in the global care chain appears to benefit
from her participation: women who employ migrant caregivers are able
to pursue opportunities in the public sphere; migrant caregivers are
able to send money home; and their children and sending nations
benefit economically from these remittances. Migrant caregivers
clearly are vulnerable to exploitation and workplace abuses, and they
and their children suffer from their long absences. However, it could
be argued that each of these harms is counterbalanced by significant
gains (Kittay, 2008, 2009). 



Some feminists argue that a feminist ethics of care is better suited
to theorizing global care chains. In particular, care ethics
emphasizes several key normative features and practices that
traditional theories tend to overlook: concrete specificity;
acknowledgement of human dependence and vulnerability; and a
relational understanding of the self (Kittay, 2008). Care ethics
focuses on the ethical significance of relationships formed through
dependency, such as those between caregivers and their charges. Kittay
argues that intimate relationships between specific individuals, in
which caring and affection are the norm, play a vital role in forming
and sustaining individuals' self-identities. When these
relationships are disrupted, people suffer harm to their sense of self
and self-respect. It follows that the harm involved in global care
chains lies in their threat to the core relationships that are
constitutive of self-identity. 



To protect dependents and caregivers from the harms that flow from
fractured relationships, Kittay believes the right to give and receive
care should be recognized as a basic human right. Weir agrees that
dismantling global care chains requires recognizing care as "an
intrinsic good, a source of identity and meaning, which should be
recognized as a human right" (Weir 2005, 313). However, both
also suggest that the recognition of a properly formulated right to
care would not eliminate global care chains on its own. Care chains
will persist until care, whether provided by professionals or within
family networks, is socially recognized and economically supported.
Caregiving responsibilities should also be more fairly distributed
between genders and paid work should be organized with the recognition
that all workers--male and female, rich and poor--are
responsible for providing care. Unlocking care chains will also
require mitigating the unjust background conditions that force women
to choose between providing financial support for their families and
being with and providing face to face care for them. To begin,
immigration policies must include specific provisions that make it
easier for careworkers to bring their children or return home on a
regular basis. Ultimately, however, eliminating care chains will
require restructuring the global economy so that no one is forced to
leave her home country to find decent working and living
conditions.



Finally, many recent feminist philosophical analyses of migration
explore the relationship between transnational migration and various
forms of structural injustice, including gender oppression, racism and
white supremacy, global economic inequality, militarization, and
legacies of colonialism. For instance, Wilcox argues that
transnational injustices generate strong moral claims to admission for
certain groups of prospective migrants. She advances two arguments for
this claim. The first contends that the principle of collective
political responsibility obligates states to grant admission priority
to prospective migrants who have been seriously harmed by their
policies, including economic policies that disproportionately harm
women and marginalized workers in less affluent countries (Wilcox
2007). Her second argument maintains that a commitment to relational
egalitarianism entails rejecting immigration restrictions that
contribute to oppressive transnational structural relations. In the
context of gendered and racialized global supply chains, this includes
those restrictions on labor migration that increase workers'
vulnerability to exploitation, domination, violence, and
marginalization (Wilcox 2012).



Other feminists focus on the relationship between structural injustice
and refugee determination. In particular, they argue that legal
definitions of refugeehood are insufficiently attentive to
gender-based injustices, leading to the wrongful exclusion of
vulnerable migrants who have strong moral claims to asylum. For
instance, Parekh argues that despite feminist gains in expanding
international refugee conventions to recognize gender-related
persecution, many states sill regard some forms of gender injustice as
too apolitical or insignificant to warrant asylum (Parekh 2012).
Accounting for the ways in which structural injustices modulate and
amplify gender-based harms can lead to more inclusive--and better
justified--conceptualizations of gender persecution. Similarly,
Meyers argues that an adequate understanding of the coercive nature of
severe poverty supports broadening the conventional definition of
refugeehood to include economic refugees, many of whom are women
(Meyers 2014). Using the work of Iris Marion Young, Parekh further
argues that understanding the harms from which refugees flee as forms
of structural injustice grounds stronger moral obligations to help
refugees, both those who remain in the global South an those who seek
admission to Western states (Parekh 2017, 2020).



Feminists also warn that migration regimes tend to reinforce existing
forms of domination and even create new types of oppression. More
specifically, they argue that migration, refugee, and citizenship
discourses, policies, and practices often draw upon pernicious
stereotypes and entho-nationalist tropes to construct gendered and
racialized subjects that are, in turn, mobilized to justify the
domination, exclusion, and marginalization of the individuals they are
thought to represent. For instance, Cisneros argues that recent U.S.
political debates about so-called "anchor babies" draw
upon sexist and nationalist conceptions of women as reproducers of the
ethnic nation, together with the racist notion of the "illegal
alien," to portray migrant women, particularly undocumented
women, as an existential threat to the (white supremacist) nation
(Cisneros 2013). This fictive subject is then taken to justify
coercive immigration and citizenship policies designed to exclude
migrant women of color and bar even U.S. born children of unauthorized
migrants from citizenship. Similarly, Reed-Sandoval argues that the
U.S. immigration regime, which she views as a "social-historical
racial project that served to reorganize and redistribute resources by
means of branding certain bodies as 'illegals' in the
United States," has generated a unique social identity, which
she calls "being socially undocumented" (Reed-Sandoval
2020, 86). Being socially undocumented is distinct from being legally
undocumented in that it does not necessarily involve a lack of legal
authorization, but rather membership in the social group of people who
are subject to a common set of unjust, self-legitimating,
"illegalizing," immigration-related constraints, including
racial profiling and police harassment, offensive stereotypes, and
exploitative and degrading employment practices, on the basis of being
perceived to be undocumented, regardless of immigration status.
Finally, Oliver argues that that so-called humanitarian responses to
the contemporary refugee crisis are governed by a similar
self-justifying logic, which she calls carceral humanitarianism
(Oliver 2017a, 2017b). According to this logic, refugees can
justifiably be sorted into groups based on their perceived risk to
host societies, made to prove the trauma that constitutes their case
for asylum, confined to detention centers and refugee camps
indefinitely, subjected to violence and denied basic human rights, and
in many cases, treated like terrorist threats or prisoners of war.
Merged with rescue politics, which represents refugees as helpless
victims to be rescued and saved, carceral humanitarianism "turns
refugees into criminals and charity cases simultaneously, which, in
turn, becomes the troubling justification for locking them up or
locking them in, increasingly in dangerous, disease-ridden and sorely
inadequate conditions" (Oliver 2017b, 185).


### 3.3 Human Rights



The term 'human rights' refers simultaneously to several
things: a moral language; a set of norms and laws, both national and
international; and a framework for analyzing and responding to the
various serious harms experienced by men and women around the world.
Feminist political philosophers argue that globalization has had
contradictory effects on the extent to which women experience human
rights violations.



Many feminist political philosophers have argued that globalization
has contributed to human rights violations against women. Most
obviously, neoliberal policies have led to infringements of specific
social and economic rights, such as the right "to a standard of
living adequate for the health and well-being" and the right
"to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability,
widowhood, and old age" (Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
article 25). Moreover, by diminishing women's economic security,
neoliberal policies have exacerbated existing forms of gender
discrimination and violence and made women and girls more vulnerable
to a wide variety of additional human rights violations. Three
examples are prominent in the literature. First, the economic
insecurity and concomitant increase in poverty associated with
globalization have made girls more vulnerable to sexual exploitation.
In particular, girls are more likely to be sold as child brides or
pushed into prostitution or sexual slavery in order to support their
families (Okin 1998, 45). Second, when resources are scarce, women and
girls are less likely to receive food than boys and men and are less
likely to attend school. Finally, Shiva argues that neoliberal
globalization has made women more vulnerable to sexual violence. She
notes the extraordinary increase in rape in India: 800 percent since
the 1970s and an additional 250 percent since the economy was
liberalized (Morgan 2013). Although the reasons for this rise are
complex, Shiva believes they are connected to several aspects of
globalization: structural adjustment policies, which eliminated major
sectors of women's economic activity; the destruction of the
natural environment, which displaced many women; and the exclusion of
women from economic and political decision-making.



More positively, some feminist philosophers contend that globalization
has enabled women to claim their human rights by creating "new
spaces, institutions and rhetoric where the notion of universal human
rights is a powerful justificatory principle" (Walby 2002, 534).
Others credit globalization for the emergence of new international
non-governmental organizations and feminist social movements, which
have strengthened the worldwide movement for women's human
rights (Robinson 2003, 161). The "women's rights are human
rights" movement has used the language of human rights, which
some proponents believe provides "the best chance of realizing
the long sought after goal of gender equality," to criticize
many assaults on women's dignity that were previously considered
to be natural or inevitable (Panzer 2009, 45). For instance, the
movement has shown that abuses in the private sphere, such as domestic
violence, so-called "honor killings," and violence done in
the name of culture or tradition, are legitimate human rights
violations. Others have argued that cultural practices like female
genital cutting (FGC), which many consider to be human rights
violations, can be made compatible with universal human rights if
certain conditions are met (Gordon 2018). The movement also helped to
codify women's human rights in formal United Nations documents,
such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Declaration on the
Elimination of Violence Against Women, which activist groups have
subsequently used to challenge domestic laws and norms (Stamatopoulou
1995). However, as McLaren points out, it is important to attend to
the critiques made by feminists in the global South that social and
economic rights, rights that are particularly important to women in
the global South, have been marginalized in Western feminist
discourse. This critique can be accounted for, McLaren argues, if we
adopt an integrated approach to rights that both insists on the
indivisibility of human rights and acknowledges their ambivalence. If
human rights are to realize their liberatory potential, we must
recognize that human rights can reinforce injustice as well as
undermine it (McLaren 2017b). 



Women's human rights movements have also had an impact on
international understandings of the gendered consequences of war and
militarization. In UN forums and other global venues, feminists have
challenged international human rights laws concerning rape and sexual
violence in war. As Copelon explained in 2003, "[l]ess than a
decade ago, it was openly questioned whether rape was a war crime.
Human rights and humanitarian organizations largely ignored sexual
violence and the needs of its victims" (Copelon, 1). However, by
2002, feminists had successfully convinced the authors of the Rome
Statute to include a broad range of sexually violent crimes among the
gravest crimes of war. The document considers rape, forced pregnancy,
sexual assault, and forced prostitution to be "crimes against
humanity" if they are committed as part of a widespread or
systematic attack on civilian populations, in times of war as well as
peace, by non-state actors as well as official state actors. The
Statute's definition of rape goes a long way toward recognizing
rape as a gender-based atrocity on par with other long-recognized
atrocities, such as torture and genocide (Parekh 2009). Arguably,
these changes in international law would not have been possible
without transnational activism, which can clearly be seen as an
example of "globalization from below."


### 3.4 Democracy and Global Governance



As with human rights, feminist philosophers have argued that
globalization has contradictory implications for democratic
governance. On the one hand, neoliberalism has diminished national
sovereignty, further excluding women and the poor from democratic
processes (Herr 2003). Yet globalization also connects people across
national borders, creating transnational communities that offer new
avenues for democratic participation. 



Globalization has been accompanied by the establishment of formal
democracy in some countries and the number of women serving in
national legislatures has increased in some nations. However, some
feminist philosophers are quick to argue that neoliberalism has not
resulted in increased political influence for women on the whole,
especially at the level of global politics. One important reason is
that global economic institutions are neither adequately
representative nor fully democratic. Women are virtually absent from
the formal decision-making bodies of institutions such as the WTO and
the World Bank, and these institutions tend to be unofficially
dominated by the interests of wealthy nations and multinational
corporations. 



Feminists argue that women's lack of political influence at the
global level has not been compensated for by their increased influence
in national politics because globalization has undermined national
sovereignty, especially in poor nations. Structural adjustment
policies require debtor nations to implement specific domestic
policies that disproportionately harm women, such as austerity
measures, despite strong local opposition. Trade rules issued by the
World Trade Organization also supersede the national laws of signatory
nations, including those pertaining to matters of ethics and public
policy, such as environmental protections and health and safety
standards for imported goods, as well as trade tariffs (Jaggar 2001,
2002a). 



Nor does women's participation in NGOs or other organizations
within civil society guarantee that their interests will be fairly
represented. Indeed, some feminists charge that foreign-funded NGOs
are "a new form of colonialism because they create dependence on
nonelected overseas funders and their locally appointed officials,
undermining the development of social programs administered by elected
officials accountable to local people" (Jaggar 2001, 309). Even
local, women-run NGOs sometimes fail to live up to their democratic
aspirations. NGO projects are often shaped by the agendas of their
corporate funders, to the detriment of the expressed needs of the
women they serve. Demands for accountability to donors also limit the
internal democracy of NGOs by encouraging the professionalization of
grassroots organizations (Jaggar 2001, 2005a).



While feminist philosophers agree that globalization has concentrated
power in the hands of wealthy nations and corporations, further
marginalizing women and the global poor, some believe the conditions
of globalization also enable new forms of democratic accountability.
For instance, Gould argues that participants in transnational
associations have equal rights to participate in decisions about their
common activities. She also suggests that the Internet and other
communication and information technologies, such open source software
and online deliberative forums, can "help to increase both
democratic participation and representation in the functioning of
transnational institutions" (Gould 2009, 38).



Fraser (2009) further suggests that globalization has created new
transnational public spheres in which public opinion can be created
and marshaled to hold political leaders democratically accountable.
Traditional public sphere theory, such as that developed by Habermas,
defines the public sphere as an area of social life in which
individuals come together to reach a common public opinion about
social issues. Insofar as the process of deliberation is fair and
inclusive, the resulting public opinion is normatively legitimate;
because it expresses the considered will of civil society, it can be
mobilized as a political force to hold public power democratically
accountable.



However, Fraser points out that these essential features of
publicity--normative legitimacy and political efficacy--are
not easily associated with new transnational communicative arenas, in
which territorially dispersed interlocutors interact through various
discursive forms. The reason is that traditional public sphere theory
implicitly assumes a Westaphalian political model, in which
co-citizens, with equal rights to participate, create public opinion
addressed to a particular state. Thus, in her words:



> 
> [i]t is difficult to associate the notion of legitimate public opinion
> with communicative arenas in which the interlocutors are not fellow
> members of a political community, with equal rights to participate in
> political life. And it is hard to associate the notion of efficacious
> communicative power with discursive spaces that do not correlate with
> sovereign states (Fraser 2009, 77).
> 



Nevertheless, she argues, we should not jettison the idea of a
transnational public sphere, provided that the notions of normative
legitimacy and political efficacy can be reformulated to apply to
communication in transnational discursive arenas.


## 4. Conclusion



On the whole, globalization presents a number of challenges to
feminist political philosophers who seek to develop conceptions of
justice and responsibility capable of responding to the lived
realities of both men and women. As globalization will most certainly
continue, these challenges are likely to increase in the coming
decades. As we have outlined above, feminist political philosophers
have already made great strides towards understanding this complex
phenomenon. Yet the challenge of how to make globalization fairer
remains for feminist philosophers, as well as all others who strive
for equality and justice.