Chapter 23: A New Phase of Global Interaction

People spook about globalization and they referred to immense accleration in international economic transactions that took place in the second half of the 20th century and it continued into he 21st century. The aftermath of World War II was very different. The capitalist victors in the conflict, led by the United States, were determined to avoid any return to such depression-era conditions. The 'Bretton Woods system' negotiated the rules for commercial and financial dealing among the major capitalist countries, while promoting relatively free trade, stable currency values linked to the U.S dollar, and high levels of capital investment. Technology also was a contribution to the acceleration of economic globalization. There were containerization shipping, huge oil tankers, and air express services dramatically lowered transportation costs, while fiber optic cables and later the Internet provided the communication infrastructure for global economic interaction. In the development of this the countries population grew and especially when tied to growing economies and modeling societies.

The kind of economic globalization was taking shape in the 1970's and after was widely known as neoliberalism. The approach to the world economy favored the reduction of tariffs, the free global movement of capital, a mobile and temporary workforce, the privatization of many stature enterprises, and the government efforts to regulate the economy. The collapse of the state controlled economies of the communist world only furthered such unrestricted global capitalism. As the communism collapsed by the end of the 20th century, capitalism was global and the global was capitalist.

Women were mobilized outside of the Western world during the 20th century. They faded very different situations than did white women in the United States and Europe. From much Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the predominant issues colonialism, racism, the struggle for independence, poverty, development, political oppression, and sometimes the revolution were not indirectly related to gender. Women were affected by and engaged with all of those efforts and were welcomed by nationalist and communist leaders, mostly men, who needed their support.