Women from the Global South have been laboring inside and outside of their countries in various capacities for a very long time. These challenging work conditions––and the strenuous political circumstances–– have forced many women from these economically underprivileged locations to migrate. This panel has solicited papers that explore the relationship between immigration and work in regions where women find themselves struggling on the political, economic, social, and patriarchal levels. This session explores the working conditions for lower class women in the global south through different text modes and genres such as novels, movies, and interviews. These rhetorical texts expose how in the neocolonial age, women still survive through hard labor–a condition that has not changed since postcolonial times.

Dr. Feroza Jussawalla’s paper, focuses on how lower-class women have been exploited from colonial times through the postcolonial periods. In colonial times they were idealized through the figure of the “Ayah” but still exploited that trend continues today as her paper will show. Bapsi Sidhwa’s “Cracking India” (1991) and “The Bamboo Stalk” (2012) by the Kuwaiti writer Saud Alsanousi focus on the sexual exploitation of Asian houseworkers in rich households. Also, Dr. Touria Khannous argues that “Colorism” affects Muslim women’s work in the Middle East and North Africa. White supremacy is an ideology insofar as people in the Middle East participate in it through racialization policies, colorism and discrimination. Dr. Khannous is exposing discrimination practices against dark-skinned women in Middle Eastern society through multiple interviews with both women workers and hiring agencies. Dr. Doaa Omran’s paper on Factory Girl- a 2013 Egyptian movie– is about a 21-year-old woman who is impregnated by her supervisor. Omran’s paper deploys the movie to illustrate the pressures of poverty and work on underprivileged working women in Egypt. Omran is looking at how women are objectified in society––and in cinema––through applying Laura Mulvey’s gaze theory to Factory Girl. Dr. Nahla Khalil’s paper explores how the civil wars, uprisings, regime toppling, political prosecutions in the Middle East and North Africa triggered devastating humanitarian crises and displacement of millions of people. Khalil argues how these events impelled many Arab writers to document the traumatic experience of the migrants/refugees’ flight in pursuit of home and work. Khalil’s paper illustrates how the hard-working conditions in “An Unsafe Haven” by Nada Awar Jarra (2017), “Beyond Love by Hadiya Hussein” (2012) and “Mornings in Jenin” by Susan AbulHawa” (2010) force female protagonists in to immigrate in search of better chances.

This panel brings to attention the discriminations, enforced working conditions, ostracization that modern global south women face from both the rigid traditions imposed by the religion and the disparities of economy these women are subjugated to by a society that is blinded by stereotypes propagated by Western media, as well as exploitation in capitalist and imperialist enterprises. The stories of these abused women from India, the Philippines, the Middle East, and North Africa demonstrate the poor working conditions that women have always been subject to in what is now considered the “majority world.” Through this comparison, we would like to problematize our use of category such as the global south to show how it is in fact the majority world.

By bringing together various literary texts, from across the Global South, both written and filmic and women scholars from various parts of the world, we provide a snapshot into an unknown work-world rarely discussed in the Western academy. Various theoretical concepts both Western and non-western are employed in this panel on studying how discrimination and oppression are forced on women in the global work world. Scholars in this panel, are depending heavily on 21^st century texts from various rhetorical modes in order to explore in depth the working conditions of women–whether citizens or émigrées. These intersectional experiences of women across the globe enrich the academic dialogue about transnational feminisms and postcolonial theory. These various critical approaches and literary texts will create an enlightening basis for study and for possible publication and pedagogy.