Archive IN/IN: Feminist Voices and Perspectives

DOI: 10.1386/jcp.4.2.233_7
ISSN: 2052-6695

Domestic abuse and rape effect women of color differently than they effect white women because both the programs developed to help abused women and the laws created to punish domestic violence ignore the ways that race and gender discrimination combine to exclude women of color. Women of color lack political influence and are largely excluded from policy decision making, and thus their concerns are overlooked or misunderstood. Women of color who are victims of domestic abuse must organize to gain greater political power and remedy the effect that racism has on ignoring or discounting the violence they face as women.

Arlie Hochschild is a pioneering feminist labor scholar. Over the past forty years, she has examined how both paid and unpaid labor reflects and generates women's subordination, demonstrated the interconnections between the private and public spheres, and inserted care and emotion into analyses of work, thereby redefining Marxist notions of alienated labor. A prolific writer and public intellectual, her research and writing has reached beyond the walls of the academy, deepening our thinking about women, gender, labor, and care. Hochschild situates household responsibilities in a larger global political economy, illuminating how private, individual decisions are tied to broader transformations. Global restructuring and neoliberal social policy have led to falling wages and made the male-breadwinner model obsolete. Although Hochschild's work has been foundational, a number of scholars have offered critiques. Perhaps most important is the presumed heteronormativity and essentialized notion of gender embedded in the idea of a female migrant who transfers her love from her own children to those of her employer.