Humans are creatures who learn by first observing, then mocking an action. Via this process we construct our identity as well; we carefully select values and morals that stand out to us and better reflect our own mind state and proceed to navigate through life with this baggage.

An individual can embody many identities, such as gender, race/ethnicity or sexual orientation, which allow us to be more complex human beings. Yet, as Dee Watts-Jones remarks, institutionalized identities also exist. Most people experience both privilege (though might not be aware) and subjugation (usually are aware), dictating in a very specific way how one experiences the world and the treatment this person is going to receive, ergo, proving that identity and social location are directly correlated. Somebody’s social location regards to where they stand in society, the position they occupy.

Tyler Jamison from the University of New Hampshire and Anthony G. James Jr. from the University of Miami defined it as “the combination of factors including gender, race, social class, age, ability, religion, sexual orientation and geographic location. This makes social location particular to each individual; that is, social location is not always exactly the same for any two individuals.”

As we further elaborate on the concept of social location, we begin to realize the importance of intersectionality and how there are several unique challenges women who intersect with more than one minoritized group face on a daily basis. Let’s put it this way: imagine society as a bus with a driver and passengers. The driver dictates in which direction the bus goes and how fast. While the passengers have a more passive role, they can see they’re going somewhere, but they don’t really have a say in it — all they can do is look out the window and watch the world go by. The bus metaphor serves to illustrate another controversial situation: globalization and its negative effects on women.

Globalization, along with the world superpowers, embodies the role of the bus driver, as it acts as a connecting medium for the integration of political, economic and cultural systems while the helpless passengers are developing countries like Africa, Asia and Latin America. This raises the question: are countries not going to be able to make decisions on their own? Will they have to consult other countries (the bus driver) in order to choose what road to take to achieve advancement?

In addition to decision-making, individuals are also impacted by globalization when a country is integrated into the “world society,” hence, intensifying gender roles. The problem can be analyzed under three different lenses: economically, politically and culturally.

Economically speaking, globalization can lead to discrimination in favor of male workers and the marginalization of women in unpaid or informal labor. Women who work in low-wage sweatshops will become virtually invisible, and loss of income from traditional sources will cause dangerous impoverishment. Although we perceive these kinds of low-wage jobs as simple and repetitive, they are in effect extremely physically demanding, requiring inhumanely long shifts, inevitably forcing the woman to reconcile work and family life, often causing the neglect of children — but they have no choice. The oppression created by globalization on women is politically damaging for the gender, too, due to the exclusion from local politics and all but control when it comes to global matters.

In my opinion, what is ultimately harmed the most by globalization is culture. There is only so much “novelty” a certain culture can intake before it starts to lose its own identity, morphing into this new, constructed copycat. In her book “The Whole Woman,” Germaine Greer explains how “women face a contradiction. … Speechless women endure endless hardship, grief and pain in a world system that creates billions of losers for every handful of winners.”