Five Steps Backward: How women become second-rate citizens of globalisation

Talk by Laura Agustín

6 October 2011
13.00 to 14.30

Institute of Development Studies, Knots Meeting Area
University of Sussex
Library Rd, Falmer, Brighton
East Sussex BN1 9RE
See area map and campus map.
Trains and buses go to the campus from Brighton centre

Whether the subject is migration, surrogate motherhood, international matchmaking, tourism and expatriatism or plain old commercial sex, women are consistently assigned the passive role. They cannot make their own decisions, men pursue them relentlessly for evil ends and their sexual bodies are innately vulnerable. A Rescue Industry from the enlightened middle class is required to save women from themselves everywhere. How did we get here after 50 years of women’s liberation, affirmative action programmes and both state and UN policies to instate Gender Equality?

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist