Buy an essay on Carla Freeman “ High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy: Women, Work and Pink Collar Identities in the Caribbean”.

This book is an ethnographic work , that touches the topic of gender inequality in the modern labor world. Particularly it deals with expanding role of women in the modern world and modern economy , and phenomenon of women’s segregation.
This book is of high importance and interest because it deals with problems of modern world and the need to analyze the impact of globalization on the economic status of women.
Today’s world faces complex and contradictory process of economic globalization, which made a profound transformation in the entire system of world economy and in national economies. The labor market is a key subsystem of the economy and is one of the most reliable indicators of change. The urgency of the global labor market study in the context of globalization is defined as the importance of the subsystem of the labor market for a modern market economy and the need to understand the changes that have occurred over the past twenty years in the global economy, as well as the influence of processes occurring in the workplace.
In connection with the globalization of the world economy there is a question of globalization and creation of global labor market. The profound changes in the workplace, labor organization, the structure of employment, labor relations put before the science of economics the issue of evolution of the global labor market. In these circumstances, what stands out the study of international migration issues and problems of international regulation of labor relations. The contradictions in the formation of the world the global labor market is largely removed by the formation of regional labor markets.
Although the economic globalization have created new employment opportunities forwomen, there are also trends that have exacerbated inequalities between men and women. At the same time, globalization, including economic integration, can affect the level of women’s employment, forcing them to adapt to new circumstances and to find new sources of employment.
Nowadays women all over the world try to increase their role in the society and economy, trying to achieve good career results in different spheres. They search for high positions, good salaries and improving their well-being. But in the developing countries in this process women have to face a problem of structural factors, that prevent them from getting high positions and wages. And this happens not due to the gaps in education, skills or knowledge, but due to the gender gaps, and this factor leads to the wage inequality.
The is a view that “ market liberalization is a beneficial mechanisms to improve women’s relative status, but this view must be questioned in light of the structural conditions faced in labor markets”. (World Bank, Engendering Development, p.13)
Also, according to the World Bank “The relative wages of men and women…are…largely determined by the structure of markets…Firms operating in competitive environments discriminate less against women in hiring and pay practice than do firms with significant market power in protected environments…(World Bank, Engendering Development, p. 17).
So the author studies the example of transitional corporations located in Barbados, that are a good example of global gender studies. This Caribbean region is in called a transitional economy, and has a deep intersection between political economy and cultural studies. In this region Afro-Caribbean women do want to combine both family duties and work. But also it is important that women want to work in a new high-tech industry, that can be explained by the global tendency: a formation of a new type of workers and new type of international division of labor. Nowadays computer-based clerical work, that the author calls “informatics”, has transited from developed countries to developing. In this process Barbados became a good place for such a work, because it has cheap labor force, English-speaking population, relative political stability. All these factors contribute to the emergence of a large number of workers engaged in informatics. (Freeman 2000)
Carla Freeman, being an anthropologists, studies the work and workers of the “informatics” sphere in Barbados. She uses different types of interviews and observations of participants of her study. She concentrates on a study of work of 2 companies of the sphere: Data Air one that processes air-tickets and insurance forms, and the second is Multitext, that provide keyboarding services to different publishers. (Freeman 2000)
The authors makes a portrait of informatics workers: their work discipline is organized as a blue-collar professionals and clerical workers, that is informatics workers form a new image of professional dress, to be distinguished from the factory workers.
Caribbean women also participate in this kind of work, that are high-tech informatics jobs. But women try to change the concepts of “professionalism” in worker’s appearances and labor practices, as they introduce their own “pink-collar” type of workers. Also it is important that women pointed that “motherhood and work go hand in hand”. The main idea and purpose of that is to distinguish themselves from factory workers, and that can be achieved by new image making and new dress style. In fact, the new “formal economy” created by women leads to need of new fashion activities, and so “generates wide array of extra income earning activities”. (Freeman 2000)
This leads to a conclusion made by the author that “for the new Barbadian pink-collar workers, the globalization of production cannot be viewed apart from the globalization of consumption”.
The main importance of the work made by Carla Freeman is that she made an attempt to analyze and compare formal and informal economies. From that analysis she pointed the connections between that types of economies, also compare first world consumers and third world producers, and contrast white-collar and blue-collar labor.
The book “High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy” is useful source of information about the Caribbean culture and global economy, with the central question of gender differences and gender issues.

References:
Carla Freeman. “High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy: Women, Work and Pink Collar Identities in the Caribbean”. Duke University Press, 2000
“Introduction: Thinking about Caribbean Media Worlds” International Journal of Cultural Studies, №12б March 2009. Pp. 99-111
World Bank. “Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights”. Washington D.C.: 2001