ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to understand the influence of globalization on gender differences in economic activity over the life course and explores the new types of employment for women provided by transnational corporations, often in Export Processing Zones. The world is more globally integrated than it was in the middle of the twentieth century but it is far from fully globalized. Globalization processes ‘involve not merely the geographical extension of economic activity across national boundaries but also–and more importantly–the functional integration of internationally dispersed activities’. The process of globalization of economic activity is not only strongly gendered but is also spatially linked with urban areas, which are seen as the locus of modernization in developing countries. In most parts of the developing world women reach their maximum level of economic activity in their early 20s, while the maximum for men occurs a little later.
