Summary of Enloe

In  “The Globetrotting Sneaker” and “Daughters and Generals in the Politics of the Globalized Sneaker”, Enloe takes up issue with the rise of the popular culture sneaker phenomenon in the post-Cold War era of globalization and the effects that had on women.  Enloe begins by describing how after the Berlin Wall fell, Reebok decided to open a store in Moscow in 1993.  At the time, Reebok was considered one of the US’s most rapidly growing companies, with sales exceeding all others.  The store opening in Moscow was a crucial turning point for Russians because it gave them the option to buy footwear, which were symbolic of American popular culture, even though the price of the shoes was much higher than many Russians could afford.  As Enloe notes, this was a time when, “almost 60 percent of Russia’s single parents, most of whom were women, were living in poverty,” (43).  Nonetheless, children began urging their parents to get them these neat new sneakers, which were thought to give an edge above other children. 

As the American sneaker industry boomed in Russia and around the world, the workers behind their production were never questioned or made into an issue.  According to Enloe, however, women, and more specifically Asian women, were the most susceptible to becoming workers for the sneaker industry.  For Asian women, working for a sneaker factory was a sign of globalization and progress, while Russian women believed that the new Russia had been born seeing that they could now somewhat afford to buy their children fancy sneakers.  This was primarily a result of the NATO and WTO trade agreements that emerged in the nineties, which gave private companies the ability to trade freely and in turn, exploit women for cheap labor.

The “New World Order” of the globalization of sneakers was most evident in South Koreas’s city of Pusan during the eighties.  American sneaker companies in South Korea believed that men should be the managers and responsible for unions that were emerging.  Women, on the other hand, were ideal for cheap labor because their Confucian values promoted working for the good of their family, as fathers and husbands had hoped they would do.  Luckily, South Korean women responded to this as the pro-democracy movement was taking place and saw through their exploitation with the help of feminists on the scene.  The Korean Women Workers Association was one group that formed during this time and aimed to raise awareness among women about fair treatment in the workforce. Suddenly, women saw a rise not only in unions, but also in their earnings that by 1990, had them earning over fifty percent of what men were earning.  When sneaker companies realized that women were no longer “ideal”, they decided it was time to pack up and move to a new location, such as China or Indonesia, where authoritarian regimes made it easy to exploit women for cheap labor. 

Although many companies now report on working conditions in their factories following UN”s Beijing conference in 1995, it is definitely still evident that women are suffering from cheap labor conditions.  Under the “divide and rule” tactic of globalization, the workforce for women in these neighboring countries has become all the more competitive.  Fortunately, many women have become more aware of their conditions and have advocated for their rights and needs in the post-Cold War environment of globalization.

“Daughters and Generals in the Politics of the Globalized Sneaker” touches on many of the same issues raised in the previous chapter.  Enloe begins by examining the roots of the sporting goods franchise phenomenon at American universities, such as Michigan State, where politics and clothing are deeply intertwined.  At universities like Michigan State, sporting good logos mean everything through binding contracts and there are serious penalties if these logos are in any way tampered with.  Enloe suggests that this phenomenon emerged after the Cold War, again particularly in South Korea, bringing the politics of women to the forefront of the scene.  

By using the construction of feminization, American sporting goods companies could manipulate women and their families into believing in the cheap labor industry.  With support from the government, women were now supposed to leave their rural farms and head to cities where working for industrialization would make them more patriotic and respectable daughters, or wives.  Women were now supposed to be responsible for brining dowries into their marriages and parents were now supposed to accept this new attitude.  As Enloe puts it: “Inside every computer chip, inside every elaborately stitched sneaker…is a complex web of Cold War militarized, feminized respectability and daughterly patriotism,” (61).  Furthermore, sneaker companies promoted the idea of a high turnover rate to ensure that they could pay women the minimum wage for “training” positions, as well as dating services that emphasized women’s new role in society instead of their role as individual citizens. Like South Korea, Enloe points out that Indonesia has become the modern-day example of this globalization phenomenon. 

Enloe does note, however, that women became knowledgeable of sneaker companies’ dependence on women’s marriage strategies for success in South Korea.  As a result, governments and companies were forced to make the decision that it was time to “restructure” the economy to make up for the loss of women employment.  Although there seems to be no end to this cyclical globalization pattern, Enloe hopes that women in countries facing the same dilemmas as South Korea faced after the Cold War can see through their exploitation and become just as proactive as the girls on American sneaker are advertised to be.