In the global context also, a gendered international division of labour
has emerged as migrant Third World women become a cheap and flexible
source of labour for MNCs in free trade zones (Mitter 1986; Standing
1992; Ong 1997). Saskia Sassen’s (1991, 1998) research shows how
global cities, the nodal points for global financial markets and economic
transactions, are dependent on a class of women workers. Like ‘intimate
others’ of economic globalization, domestic workers, typically immigrant
women of colour, service the masculinized corporate elite in these
urban centres (Boris and Prugl 1996; Stasilius and Bakan 1997; Chin
1998; Chang and Ling 2000).