Women of the New Century.(impact of globalization on women)

When the great globalization epic is written or filmed, or perhaps pixilated, it will probably be spun as a Boys Own adventure story. Young men in T shirts fiddling with their computers. Older men in suits hustling into conference rooms to topple trade barriers. Messrs. Gates, Jobs and Turner unleashing big ideas on big stages. A dreamy long shot of the Earth itself, trussed in broadband connections and watched over by satellites. Cue for "The World Is Not Enough" -esque montage of zooming planes, passionate B2B encounters and Nokias vibrating in boardrooms.

But future scriptwriters take note: don't ignore the subplot. Globalization's effect on Europe's women is a subtler story, more Jane Austen than James Bond. Consider the following scenes: a stressed executive pleads with her babysitter to stay late--again. A panning shot along a road leading to Rome, where scantily dressed Eastern European girls offer sex for cash. Or the case of the 38-year-old Greek mother of two whose husband beat her. One day she opens a telephone bill from the partially privatized Hellenic Telecommunications Organization, whose modernization strategy includes a social-awareness campaign. Wrapped in the phone bill is a flier with the hot-line number for an Athens women's shelter. She walks to the shelter to seek help. "Rock and roll came from abroad," she told NEWSWEEK. "Crime came from abroad. And where did moral freedom come from? Abroad."

For European women, globalization's fallen trade barriers, blurred national boundaries and new technology have brought the best of times-- and the worst. The European Union's freedom of movement created more career opportunities, but increased competition and with it, stress. Mobile phones and e-mail mean women can work from home--but also make it harder for them to leave the office behind. Creeping Americanization has shaken up antique boardroom attitudes--but also ushered in a 24/7 work schedule. Leaner company structures make it easier to negotiate part-time work, but harder to get paid maternity leave or a pension. A boom economy means women have little trouble finding jobs, but with cuts in education and health, they may have trouble getting trained for good ones--or finding child care while they're at them.

In Eastern Europe, the fall of communism unleashed political freedoms, open markets and a bright array of consumer goods. But it also restructured thousands of women out of work. In Western Europe, the stats from Brussels send a mixed message: women have filled 70 percent of the 4 million new jobs created in the European Union in the last two years. At the same time, 80 percent of the European Union's poor are women and children. Cautions the United Nation's "Progress of the World's Women 2000" report, "market liberalization offers the freedom to go hungry as well as opportunities for independent incomes."

It's a messy business, globalization. But for dynamic and entrepreneurial women across Europe, this brave new world has brought fresh opportunities (photos). For women like Emma Holmes, who manages a Gap Kids store in London, working for an American international company has brought chances her mother never had. "If I wake up tomorrow and feel like working in San Francisco, the company will send me, if there's an opening," she says. "My mom keeps saying, 'Oh, you've got to go! I'd love to do that!' " Job mobility will only increase if the World Trade Organization has its way; the General Agreement on Trade in Services aims to remove barriers to trade in service industries--which employ about 80 percent of Europe's working women--ranging from banking to tourism.

The new mobility is less positive for many Eastern European women, who over the last decade have lost quotas in parliaments and job protection when the public sector shrank to make way for capitalism. Relaxed border restrictions and hard times have colluded to create a new industry: the trafficking of prostitutes from Central Asia and Eastern Europe to Western Europe. Smugglers go to poor villages in former Soviet bloc countries like Ukraine and Moldova, promising office jobs that pay enough to feed entire families. Irini Penkina, a 20-year-old Russian, believed the sales pitch and went to Greece. There she found herself stashed in a stifling apartment bordello in the port of Thessaloniki. To escape, Penkina hanged herself; she left no suicide note. "The collapse of communism has been good for Greece's 'promoters' in the prostitution racket," says Georgia Doussia, a member of a newly formed group opposing forced prostitution. Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, Greece had no more than 2,000 illegal prostitutes, police say. Now there are an estimated 20,000.

For those lucky enough to be trained for it, the New Economy has been great. "Once you get a good education, the world's your oyster," says 29-year-old Sinead Masterson. Born to working-class parents in Dublin, Masterson got two degrees in information technology. She now works as an IT consultant in equity derivatives at a multinational bank in London. As part of a team with a membership so international it's "like the United Nations," she's traveled to Tokyo and New York. For work she loves, she makes six figures. Moreover, she works only four days a week on a yearly renewable contract. The arrangement lends her freedom: between contracts she can take six months off to travel, recharge or retrain. That said, she gets no pension, paid holidays or maternity leave. "If I don't come in, I don't get paid," says Masterson. "But there'll always be a market for contractors."