문화산업의 지구화와 성불평등

Globalization and the Critical Role of the Cultural Industry in Women's Daily Lives

This article seeks to examine the impact of globalization and the critical role that the cultural industry has played in transforming women's daily lives. In order to examine this phenomenon, I first explore the political-economic aspects of globalization and its intricate nexus with women. While the processes of economic globalization have played an important role in increasing women's formal employment in terms of sheer numbers, according to various databases, labor conditions have not improved or remain relatively unchanged. In other words, changes have occurred only at the technological level and the majority of the female workforce is still made up of unskilled women workers. In addition, nation states, following the dictates of neoliberal politics have prioritized the marketing aspects of capital. The politics of globalization has had little regard for any social security system and has sought to abolish social welfare services for poor and disenfranchised women. The cultural aspects of globalization have significantly affected the lives of women. The culture industry is central to globalization because culture serves as an effective means for distributing goods and providing a channel for the influx of foreign capital. While technology plays an important role in the production of the cultural industry, women have had relatively little control over this medium, and this new mode of patriarchal control has expanded globally. In this paper, I pay particular attention to the power of patriarchy in this new globalized capitalist economy and its role in shaping cultural symbols. I also examine the role of culture in determining commodity values in popular fields like advertisement and music videos. The image of women in advertisements, in particular catchy slogans, will be examined to illuminate the sexual division and commodification of women and its influence on social behavior (i.e. affirming sexual discrimination). From its inception, feminist cultural critics have viewed music videos as one alternative medium for countering patriarchal dominance. Its main function, according to these critics, has been to deconstruct established sexual inequalities. However, I posit that the contents of these videos only produce cultural symbols that intensify the reification and commodification of women on a global scale. Finally, I address the global impact of the Internet on women in the present era. The internet has offered a wide range of possibilities and venues for communication among women. However, while the internet can be viewed as a new social space (i.e. subversive) for oppressed women, I argue that internet pornography, for example, has become extremely popular and has become a new form of sexual commodification. Men, who are good at controlling the internet, can now effectively and with great ease disseminate, reproduce, and consume various discriminatory images of women. On another level, I look at internet shopping to show how women have become dependent on this new mode of patriarchal power. In its marketing schema, women are functioned only as passive consumers with uncontrollable and excessive desires to buy goods. In conclusion, this paper looks at the globalization of the cultural industry from a political and economic angle to show how it has reproduced sexual inequality on a global scale. I propose an alternative conceptual framework for women's culture from a feminist perspective that can challenge the patriarchal globalization of the culture industry.