Informant38

As more women from developed nations make their professional mark, their Third World sisters pick up the slack. This ongoing ''global heart transplant'' between poor and rich nations is rarely quantified by economists or recognized by most governments, according to ''Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy,'' a gripping new anthology edited by social critics Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild.

''The lifestyles of the First World are made possible by a global transfer of the services associated with a wife's traditional role - child care, homemaking, and sex - from poor countries to rich ones. While still relying on Third World countries for agricultural and industrial labor, the wealthy countries also seek to extract something harder to measure and quantify, something that can look very much like love,'' the pair write.


In one essay, ''Maid to Order,'' Ehrenreich picks up where she left off in her 2001 bestseller ''Nickel and Dimed,'' questioning the morality of corporate cleaning services that collect $25 per hour from a client, but pay out as little as $5 to the cleaner. Most often, this is a woman who is a recent immigrant with poor English skills, no health insurance, and no other job options.
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Hochschild also draws out themes from her landmark work, ''The Second Shift,'' in her essay, ''Love and Gold,'' about Filipinas working abroad as nannies. Many readers will find themselves uncomfortable with the distasteful revelation offered by ''Global Woman'' - that many Western women have become the men they didn't want to be married to. We are too busy to help with the cooking, cleaning, or child care, and in turn have pushed the drudge work onto women too poor to refuse it.