|
< < <
Date Index > > > |
Re: MACHO ALERT: Women and World-System by Mine Aysen Doyran 22 January 2001 18:45 UTC |
< < <
Thread Index > > > |
Journal of World-Systems Research, Vol V, 2, 1999, 367-388
http://csf.colorado.edu/jwsr
ISSN 1076-156X
© 1999 Valentine M. Moghadam.
Gender and Globalization:Female Labor and Women ’s
Mobilization
This paper casts a gender perspective on globalization to
illuminate the contradictory effect on women workers and on women's
activism. The scope of the paper is global. The sources of data are UN
publications, country-based data and newsletters from women'
organizations as well as the author's fieldwork. The paper begins by
examining the various dimensions of globalization – economic, political,
and cultural – with a focus on their contradictory social-gender
effects. These include inequalities in the global economy and the
continued hegemony of the core, the feminization of labor, the withering
away of the developmentalist/welfarist state, the rise of identity
politics and other forms of particularism, the spread of concepts of
human rights and women’s rights, and the proliferation of women’s
organizations and transnational feminist networks. I argue that,
although globalization has had dire economic effects, the process has
created a new constituency – working women and organizing women – who
may herald a potent anti-systemic movement. World-systems theory, social
movement theory, and development studies should take account of female
labor and of oppositional transnational feminist networks.
Defining Globalization
Globalization is a complex economic, political, cultural,
and geographic process in which the
mobility of capital, organizations, ideas, discourses, and
peoples has taken on an
increasingly global or transnational form. Much has been
written on the subject from various
disciplinary perspectives. Economic globalization pertains
to deeper integration and more
rapid interaction of economies through production, trade,
and financial transactions by
banks and multinational corporations, with an increased
role for the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund, as well as the more recent
World Trade Organization.
Although the capitalist system has always been
Page 367
Journal of
World-Systems Research
globalizing and there have been various waves of
globalization (e.g., the 1870-1914 period,
which is well documented), it is said that the trade,
capital flows, and technological advances
and transfers since the 1970s are more intensive and
extensive than in earlier periods.
Political globalization refers in part to an increasing
trend toward multilateralism, in which the
United Nations plays a key role, national non-governmental
organizations act as watchdogs
over governments, and international NGOs increase their
activities and influence. Some have
called this the making of a global civil society.
Political scientists and sociologists have
pondered the prospects of the nation-state and national
sovereignty in a context of
regionalization and globalization in which international
financial institutions have increasing
power over national economies and state decision-making.
Some political scientists are also
studying the trends toward democratic consolidation in
terms of a global process of
democratization.
Cultural globalization refers to worldwide cultural
standardization – as in "Coca
Colonization" and "McDonaldization" – but also to
postcolonial culture, cultural pluralism,
and "hybridization". The various aspects of globalization
have promoted growing contacts
between different cultures, leading partly to greater
understanding and cooperation and
partly to the emergence of transnational communities and
hybrid identities. But globalization
has also hardened the opposition of different identities.
This has taken the form of, inter alia,
reactive movements such as fundamentalism, which seek to
recuperate traditional patterns,
including patriarchal gender relations, in reaction to the
"westernizing" trends of globalization.
Various forms of identity politics are the paradoxical
outgrowth of globalization.
Consistent with the contradictory nature of globalization,
the impact on women has been
mixed. One feature of economic globalization has been the
generation of jobs for women in
export-processing, free trade zones, and world market
factories. This has enabled women in
many developing countries to earn and control income and
to break away from the hold of
patriarchal structures, including traditional household
and familial relations. At the same time,
however, much of the work available to women is badly
paid, or demeaning, or insecure;
moreover, women’s unemployment rates are higher than men’s
almost everywhere. The
feminization of poverty is another unwelcome feature of
economic globalization.
The weakening of the nation-state and the national economy
Page 368
Journal of
World-Systems Research
similarly has contradictory effects. On the one hand, the
withering away of the welfare state
as a result of the neoliberal economic policy turn is a
uniformly negative outcome for
women, in advanced and developing regions alike. On the
other hand, the globalization of
concepts of human rights and of gender equality, and the
activities of international
non-governmental organizations (NGOs), are emboldening
women and creating space for
women’s organizations to grow.
Although not much has been written on this subject, a
counter-trend to the particularisms
and the identity politics of contemporary globalization is
the worldwide dissemination of
concepts of women’s rights and the emergence of women’s
movements on a global scale.
The global nature of the women’s movement is both a
cultural and a political aspect of
globalization. Indeed, in my view, the singular
achievement of globalization is the
proliferation of women’s movements at the local level, the
emergence of transnational
feminist networks working at the global level, and the
adoption of international conventions
such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against
Women and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action
of the Fourth World
Conference on Women.
Economic Globalization and Female Labor
The trade, capital flows and technological advances that
characterize economic globalization
entail new economic policies and production systems with
important implications for national
economies, such as skill requirements, labor market
regulations, education policy, and
employment. The new "flexible" or "post-Fordist"
productions systems are guided by the
current neoliberal economic orthodoxy which also entails
"structural adjustment policies" for
developing countries as the only solution to economic
crisis and the only path to economic
growth. Structural adjustment policies, which aim to
balance budgets and increase
competitiveness through trade and price liberalization,
include reduction of the public-sector
wage bill and growth of the private sector, privatization
of social services, encouragement of
foreign investment, and the production of goods and
services for export ("tradables")
through "flexible" labor processes. The international
financial institutions, especially the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, are the
chief instigators of this
free-market policy shift. Structural adjustment policies
were first implemented in some
African and Latin
Page 369
Journal of
World-Systems Research
American countries as a result of the debt crisis of the
early 1980s. They were extended to
other countries in the mid-1980s and were adopted in a
number of Middle East countries,
including Jordan and Egypt, in the 1990s.
Structural adjustment has been a very controversial topic
in the development-studies
literature; some development economists find that it has
worked in some places but not in
others, while other economists have regarded the entire
turn to be a disaster for national
sovereignty and for people’s well-being. The feminist
literature on development has been
especially critical, charging structural adjustment with
carrying out its objectives on the
backs of the poor and especially on poor women. Women have
had to assume extra
productive and reproductive activities in order to survive
the austerities of adjustment and
stabilization policies, including higher prices, and to
compensate for the withdrawal or
reduction of government subsidies of food and services.
The adverse effects of economic globalization have been
felt within all regions, and
especially by their respective labor forces. With
increased trade, the prices of imported
goods often compete with the prices of domestic products,
forcing domestic capitalists to
attempt to cut labor costs. In the developed countries, as
plants relocate to sites elsewhere
in search of cheaper costs of labor and production, jobs
disappear and wages erode in the
declining industrial sectors. As the developed countries
shift from manufacturing to high-tech
services, blue-collar unemployment grows, along with the
expansion of part-time and
temporary jobs. This has come at the expense of the kind
of stable employment that men
came to expect during "the golden age of capitalism"
(Marglin and Schor, 1990), when
World Real GDP grew by 4.6 per cent during 1964-73.
Developing countries have seen a
shift from internally oriented to externally oriented
growth strategies and the shrinkage of
large public sectors and nationalized industries. The
result has been an expansion of informal
sectors, self-employment, and temporary employment. In
most of the former socialist world,
restructuring has led to loss of output, the creation of
unemployment, and increased poverty.
In both developing and developed regions, the stable,
organized, and mostly male labor
force has become increasingly "flexible" and "feminized".
Keeping the cost of labor low has
encouraged the growth of demand for female labor, while
declining household budgets have
led to an increase in the supply of job-seeking women.
Page 370
Journal of
World-Systems Research
Through institutions such as the transnational corporation
and the state, the global economy
generates capital largely through the exploitation of
labor, but it is not indifferent to the
gender and ethnicity of that labor. Gender and racial
ideologies have been deployed to favor
white male workers and exclude others, but they have also
been used to integrate and
exploit the labor power of women and of members of
disadvantaged racial and ethnic
groups in the interest of profit-making. In the current
global environment of open economies,
new trade regimes, and competitive export industries,
global accumulation relies heavily on
the work of women, both waged and unwaged, in formal
sectors and in the home, in
manufacturing, and in public and private services. This
phenomenon has been termed the
"feminization of labor." Guy Standing (1989) has
hypothesized that the increasing
globalization of production and the pursuit of flexible
forms of labor to retain or increase
competitiveness, as well as changing job structures in
industrial enterprises, favor the
"feminization of employment" in the dual sense of an
increase in the numbers of women in the
labor force and a deterioration of work conditions (labor
standards, income, and
employment status). Women have been gaining an increasing
share of many kinds of jobs,
but in the context of a decline in the social power of
labor and growing unemployment, their
labor-market participation has not been accompanied by a
redistribution of domestic,
household, and childcare responsibilities. Moreover, women
are still disadvantaged in the
new labor markets, in terms of wages, training, and
occupational segregation. They are also
disproportionately involved in forms of employment
increasingly used to maximize profits:
temporary, part-time, casual, and home-based work.
Generally speaking, the situation is
better or worse for women depending on the type of state
and the strength of the economy.
Women workers in the welfare states of northern Europe
fare best, followed by women in
other strong Western economies. In Eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union, the
economic status of working women changed dramatically for
the worse following the
collapse of communism. In much of the developing world, a
class of women professionals
and workers employed in the public sector and in the
private sector has certainly emerged
due to rising educational attainment, changing
aspirations, economic need, and the demand
for relatively cheap labor. However, vast numbers of
economically active women in the
developing
Page 371
Journal of
World-Systems Research
world lack formal training, work in the informal sector,
have no access to social security,
and live in poverty.
Proletarianization and Professionalization: Industry and
Services
As world markets have expanded, a process of female
proletarianization has taken place. In
developing countries -- and especially in southeast and
east Asia, parts of Latin America
and the Caribbean, and Tunisia and Morocco -- more and
more women have been drawn
into the labor-intensive and low-wage textile and garment
industries, as well as into
electronics and pharmaceuticals, which produce both for
the home market and for export.
The surge in women’s waged employment in developing
countries began in the 1970s,
following an earlier period of capitalist development and
economic growth that was
characterized by the displacement of labor and craft work,
commercialization of agriculture,
and rural-urban migration (see Boserup, 1970). Some have
called the marginalization of
women "housewife-ization" (Mies, 1986); others have
described it as the "U pattern" of
female labor-force participation in early modernization.
During the 1970s, it was observed that export-processing
zones along the U.S.-Mexico
border and in southeast Asia, established by transnational
corporations to take advantage of
low labor costs in developing countries, were hiring
mainly women (Elson and Pearson,
1981; Nash and Fernandez-Kelly, 1983; Lim 1985). By the
early 1980s, it was clear that
the new industrialization in what was then called the
Third World was drawing heavily on
women workers. Many studies by women-in-development
specialists and socialist-feminists
centered on the role played by the available pool of
relatively cheap female labor. Gender
ideologies emphasizing the "nimble fingers" of young women
workers and their capacity for
hard work, especially in the southeast Asian economies,
facilitated the recruitment of women
for unskilled and semi-skilled work in labor-intensive
industries at wages lower than men
would accept, and in conditions that unions would not
permit. In Latin America, women
entered the labor force at a time when average wages were
falling dramatically. Around the
world, women’s share of total industrial labor rarely
exceeds 30-40 percent, but "the
percentage of women workers in export processing factories
producing textiles, electronics
components and garments is much higher, with figures as
high as 90% in some cases"
Page 372
Journal of
World-Systems Research
(Pearson, 1992: 231). One study concluded that "exports of
manufactures from developing
countries have been made up in the main of the kinds of
goods normally produced by female
labor: industrialization in the post-war period has been
as much female led as export led"
(Joekes/INSTRAW, 1987: 81).
The process of the feminization of labor continued
throughout the recessionary 1980s, not
only in the manufacturing sector, but also in public
services, where throughout the world
women’s share has grown to 30-50 percent -- at a time when
public-sector wages, like
industrial wages, have been declining. In Iran, Egypt, and
Turkey, women’s share of
public-service employment (including jobs as teachers and
university professors in public
schools and state universities, nurses and doctors in
state hospitals, and workers and
administrators across the ministries) has increased. This
has occurred at a time when salaries
have eroded tremendously and more men are gravitating
toward the more lucrative and
expanding private sector (Moghadam, 1997a).
The proletarianization and professionalization of women
have cultural repercussions and
sometimes entail gender conflicts. During the 1980s the
increasing participation of women in
the labor force in Middle Eastern countries was
accompanied by subtle and overt pressures
on them to conform to religious dictates concerning dress.
Hence in Egypt, many
professional women came to don modest dress and to cover
their heads. One may
hypothesize that in the earlier stage of the Islamist
movement, the influx of women in the
work force raised fears of competition with men, leading
to calls for the redomestication of
women, as occurred immediately after the Iranian
revolution. In the current stage, with the
labor-force participation of women now a fait accompli,
Islamists in Turkey, Iran, Egypt,
Sudan, and Yemen are not calling on women to withdraw from
the labor force -- indeed,
many of their female adherents are educated and employed
-- but they do insist on veiling
and on spatial and functional segregation. Only the most
determined and secular women
resist these pressures, as they seek employment in public
and private services.
As world trade in services has increased and global firms
engage in out-sourcing, the
involvement of women in various occupations and
professions of the services sector has
grown. Women around the world have made impressive inroads
into professional services
such as law, banking, accounting,
Page 373
Journal of
World-Systems Research
computing, and architecture; in tourism-related
occupations; and in the information services,
including offshore airline booking, mail order, credit
cards, word-processing for publishers,
telephone operators, and so on. The world trade in
services also favors women’s labor
migration, in contrast to the demand for men manufacturing
workers during the earlier
periods of industrialization in Europe and the United
States. Mexican, Central American,
and Caribbean women have migrated to the United States to
work as nurses, nannies, or
domestics; Filipinas and Sri Lankans to neighboring
countries as well as to the Middle East
to work as waitresses, nurses, nannies, or domestics;
Argentine women to Italy to work as
nurses; and an increasing number of Moroccan, Tunisian,
and Algerian women migrating
alone to work in various occupations in France, Italy and
Spain.
The surge in women’s employment is characteristic not only
of developing countries. In 16
European countries, the increase in the number of women in
the labor force over the period
1983-91 was quite dramatic, whereas it was relatively
modest for men. In six countries the
number of employed men actually fell over the period, most
significantly by 3.4 percent in
Belgium (Employment Observatory, 1994: 11-14). The Nordic
countries, including
Finland, now have the highest rate of employment among
women, with North America
following close behind. Moreover, the feminization of
labor denotes not only the influx of
women into relatively low-paying jobs, but the growth of
part-time and temporary work
among men, especially in New Zealand, the United Kingdom,
and the Netherlands, mainly
in retail trade, hotels and catering, banking, and
insurance (UN, 1991: 190). Indeed, in the
Netherlands, men’s part-time work in 1992 was as high as
13.4 percent of total male
employment, up from 5.5 percent in 1979.
The Informal Sector, the Income Gap, Unemployment
At the same time that women have been entering the formal
labor force in record numbers in
the developed countries, much of the increase in female
labor-force participation in
developing countries has occurred in the informal sectors
of the economy. Unregistered and
small-scale urban enterprises, home-based work and
self-employment may fall into this
category, and they include an array of commercial and
productive activities. (The extent of
the urban informal sector and its links to the formal
sector are matters of dispute, and
women’s involvement in it has not always been captured in
the
Page 374
Journal of
World-Systems Research
official statistics.) In the urban areas of developing
countries, many formal jobs have become
"informalized" as employers seek to increase "flexibility"
and lower labor and production
costs through subcontracting, as Beneria and Roldan (1987)
showed in their study of
Mexico City. The growth of informalization is observed
also in developed countries.
Drawing on existing gender ideologies regarding women’s
roles, their attachment to family,
and the perceived lower value of their work,
subcontracting arrangements encourage the
persistence of home-based work (Boris and Prugel 1996).
Many women accept this kind of
work – with its insecurity, low wages, and absence of
benefits – as a convenient form of
income-generation that allows them to carry out domestic
responsibilities and care for
children. Fernandez-Kelly (1989: 613) emphasizes "the
process whereby employers
seeking competitive edges in domestic and international
markets can tap into not only
‘cheap labor’, which is both female and male, but also
into a substratum of labor,
predominately female, that is outside of formal
relationships".
The social relations of gender account for the pervasive
income gap between men and
women workers, a gap that is detrimental to women but
lucrative to employers. On average
women earn 75 percent of men’s wages (UNDP, 1995: 36),
with Sweden, Sri Lanka, and
Viet Nam at the upper and more egalitarian end (90
percent), and Bangladesh, Chile,
China, Cyprus, South Korea, the Philippines, and Syria at
the lower and more unequal end
(42-61 percent). The gender-based income gap is found
mainly in the private sector,
whereas the public sector tends to reward women more
equitably. Some of the income
difference in the incomes gap is certainly based on lower
education and intermittent
employment among women workers. Yet gender bias accounts
for much of the difference in
earnings. In some countries (e.g., Ecuador, Jamaica, the
Philippines), women earn less than
men despite higher qualifications, a problem that is
especially acute in the private sector
(World Bank, 1995: 45). Labor-market segmentation along
gender lines perpetuates the
income gap. For example, in the computing and information
processing sectors, the majority
of high-skilled jobs go to male workers, while women are
concentrated in the low-skilled
ones (Pearson and Mitter, 1993: 50).
Considering the social relations of gender and the
function of gender ideologies, it should
come as no surprise that despite women’s key role in the
global economy, unemployment
rates of women are very high. Global unemployment
Page 375
Journal of
World-Systems Research
is partly a function of the nature of global economic
restructuring itself, which has entailed
massive retrenchment of labor in many developing
countries, in the former socialist countries
now undergoing marketization, and in the developed
countries. Unemployment rates are
especially high in Algeria, Jamaica, Jordan, Egypt,
Morocco, Nicaragua, Poland, the Slovak
Republic, and Turkey (World Bank, 1995: 29) – but they are
often higher for women than
for men (Moghadam, 1995). In many developing countries
unemployed women are new
entrants to the labor force, who are seeking but not
finding jobs (as in Egypt, Iran, Turkey,
and Chile, where women’s unemployment can be as high as 30
percent, compared with 10
percent for men); in certain countries where restructuring
has occurred in enterprises
employing large numbers of women, or in export sectors
that have lost markets, the
unemployment rates of women may also reflect job losses by
previously-employed women
-- as in Malaysia in the mid-1980s, Viet Nam in the late
1980s, Poland, Bulgaria and Russia
in the early 1990s, and Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey more
recently.
In some cases, women experience job loss as a result of
technological advances in the
workplace. As has been noted above, many enterprises
producing textiles and electronics,
especially those for export, rely heavily on women
workers. And yet as more sophisticated
technology is used to produce these goods, women workers
tend to be replaced by men or
recruited at a slower pace, as appears to have been
occurring in the Mexican
maquiladoras (Sklair, 1993), and in the textiles
industries of Spain and Italy.
In all regions, high unemployment represents the downside
of economic globalization,
especially for women workers, who must contend with not
only the class biases but also the
gender biases of free-market economics. The feminization
of unemployment, therefore, is as
much a characteristic of the global economy as is the
feminization of labor.
Structural Adjustment and Women
As mentioned above, structural adjustment policies have
been controversial in the
development community. The now-classic UNICEF study,
Adjustment with a Human
Face (Cornia, Jolly, and Stewart, 1987), highlighted the
social costs of adjustment and
provided empirical evidence of the deterioration of social
conditions in ten countries
undergoing adjustment. Subsequent studies found that there
have been differential impacts
on the various
Page 376
Journal of
World-Systems Research
categories of the poor, including the "chronic" poor,
"borderline" poor, and the "new" or
"working poor". In the early 1980s, critical voices argued
that adjustment and stabilization
programs in developing countries were having particularly
adverse effects on women. Da
Gama Santos (1985) recognized that the gender division of
labor and the differential
positions of women and men in the spheres of production
and reproduction would mean that
the new policy shifts would lead to very different
outcomes for women and men, although
these gender differences would differ further by social
class and by economic sector. Others
have found that the burden of adjustment falls on the
urban poor, the working class, and
women (Elson, 1991; Sparr, 1995).
In many ways, the women of the working class and urban
poor have been the "shock
absorbers" of neoliberal economic policies. Structural
adjustment policies -- with their
attendant price increases, elimination of subsidies,
social-service decreases, and introduction
or increase of "user fees" for "cost recovery" in the
provision of schooling and health care --
heighten the risk and vulnerability of women and children
in households where the
distribution of consumption and the provision of health
care and education favor men or
income-earning adults. Structural adjustment causes women
to bear most of the
responsibility of coping with increased prices and
shrinking incomes, since in most instances
they are responsible for household budgeting and
maintenance. Rising unemployment and
reduced wages for men in a given household lead to
increased economic activity on the part
of women and children. This occurs also in households
headed by women, an increasing
proportion of all households in most regions. Household
survival strategies include increases
in the unpaid as well as paid labor of women, as discussed
in the previous section. In the
Philippines, mean household size increased, as relatives
pooled their resources. One study
found that the combined effects of economic crisis and
structural adjustment in Peru led to a
significant increase in poverty, with worse outcomes for
households headed by women.
Structural adjustment policies and other forms of
neoliberalism are said to be a major factor
behind the "feminization of poverty" (see Moghadam,
1997b).
Why do economic crises and structural adjustment hurt
women more than they do men?
The reasons have to do with both the social relations of
gender and the nature of market
reforms.
Customary biases and intrahousehold inequalities lead
to lower consumption by and
fewer benefits for women and girls among lower-income
groups.
Page 377
Journal of
World-Systems Research
The mobility of labor that is assumed by free-market
economics and encouraged by
structural adjustment policies does not take into
account the fact that women’s
geographic and occupational mobility is constrained
by family and childrearing
responsibilities.
The legal and regulatory framework often does not
treat women as autonomous
citizens but rather as dependents or minors -- with
the result that in many countries,
women cannot own or inherit property, or seek a job
or take out a loan without the
permission of husband or father.
Structural adjustment policies over-stretch women's
labor time by increasing women's
productive activities (higher labor-force
participation due to economic need and
household survival strategy) and reproductive burdens
(in that women have to
compensate in care-giving for cutbacks in social
services). Working-class women
and urban poor women are particularly hard hit.
Because of women's concentration in government jobs
in many developing countries,
and because the private sector discriminates against
women or is otherwise
"unfriendly" to women and unwilling to provide
support structures for working
mothers, middle-class women may suffer
disproportionately from policies that aim to
contract the public-sector wage bill by slowing down
public-sector hiring.
Industrial restructuring or privatization adversely
affect women, as women tend to be
laid off first because of gender bias, but also
because women workers tend to be
concentrated in the lower rungs of the occupational
ladder, in unskilled production
jobs, or in overstaffed administrative and clerical
positions.
The poverty-inducing aspect of structural adjustment
hits women hard and is
especially hard on female-headed households with
children.
Labor-market discrimination and job segregation
result in women being concentrated
in the low-wage employment sectors, in the informal
sector, and in the contingent of
"flexible labor".
The above discussion highlights the ways in which women
have been incorporated into the
global economy as a source of relatively cheap labor, and
Page 378
Journal of
World-Systems Research
the social-gender effects of economic globalization. The
simultaneous emergence and
expansion of formal and informal employment among women
can be explained in terms of
labor-market segmentation, various management strategies
to extract surplus-value or
increase profitability, and (thus far) the depressed
status of unions. I have argued that the
global economy is maintained by gendered labor, with
definitions of skill, allocation of
resources, occupational distribution, and modes of
remuneration shaped by asymmetrical
gender relations and by gender ideologies defining the
roles and rights of men and women
and of the relative value of their labor. But the effects
have not been uniformly negative, for
there have been unintended consequences of women’s
economic participation. Tiano
(1994) and Kim (1997) provide detailed accounts of how
women workers in the Mexican
maquilas and in a South Korean free export zone,
respectively, accommodate and resist the
dominating forces of global capitalism and patriarchy.
Others have shown that the entry of
women into the labor force in such large numbers has
important implications for changes in
gender relations and ideologies within the household and
the larger society, and for women’s
gender consciousness and activism (Safa 1996).
Women’s Responses to Globalization
It should come as no surprise that the massive entry of
women into the work force around
the world, whether as professionals or as proletarians,
has coincided with the political
mobilization of women and the expansion of women’s
organizations of all types. In this
section I will discuss two types of women’s mobilization:
as workers (in unions) and as
critics of neoliberalism in transnational feminist
networks.
Women and Unionization
In a number of advanced industrialized countries (the
United States, Australia, the Nordic
countries) women are the largest growing union
constituency. In Japan, the Asian Women
Workers’ Center studies and promotes the rights of women
workers throughout east and
southeast Asia and publishes a newsletter called Resources
Materials on Women’s Labor
in Japan. In Taiwan the Grassroots Women Workers Centre,
established in 1988, engages
in various activities, including defense of the rights of
immigrant women workers, and
publishes a newsletter called Female Workers in Taiwan.
Page 379
Journal of
World-Systems Research
According to its Spring 1994 newsletter: "The Centre
intends to provide opportunities for
factory women and family subcontractors to reform the
male-dominated workers’ union,
and to develop women workers’ unions and workers’
movements through the promotion of
feminism". Similar activities and goals are shared by the
Committee for Asian Women in
Hong Kong. In Morocco, feminist groups have come to the
assistance of factory women
who went on strike over sexual harassment. In Guatemala,
women workers at an export
shirt-making factory won a union contract, the first in a
Guatemala maquiladora. In India,
the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) operates as a
trade union and a
consciousness-raising feminist organization. In Israel,
Arab women workers ignored by the
Histadrut formed the Arab Women Workers Project.
In the Middle East and North Africa, the involvement of
women in paid employment has
resulted in the politicization of women and of gender
issues. In Tunisia, the National
Commission on Working Women was created in July 1991
within the Tunisian General
Federation of Workers. The Commission has 27 branches
throughout Tunisia, and carries
out surveys and studies pertaining to women and the
workplace. In Morocco, a Roundtable
on the Rights of Workers was organized in 1995 by the
Democratic League of Women’s
Rights, and a committee structure was subsequently formed,
consisting of 12 participating
organizations. The group seeks to revise the labor code to
take into account women’s
conditions, to include domestic workers in the definition
of wage-workers and the
delineation of their rights and benefits, to set the
minimum work age at 15, and to provide
workers on maternity leave with full salary and a job-back
guarantee. In November 1995,
some 500 women textile workers employed by the Manufacture
du Maroc factory outside
Rabat went on strike for two weeks to protest "repeated
violence" against several women
employees. This included the arbitrary dismissal of the
general secretary of the factory’s
union of women workers, her subsequent rape by a foreman,
and the firing of 17 women
workers who protested the union leader’s dismissal and
rape. Morocco’s Association of
Democratic Women then set out to "mobilize human rights
organizations and all the
women’s organizations" in defense of the women workers.
The incident not only shows the
vulnerability of women at the workplace, but the capacity
of women workers to fight in
defense of their
Page 380
Journal of
World-Systems Research
rights, and the ability of the feminist organizations to
mobilize support for women workers.
Historically, the labor movement has been constituted
largely by men, and the culture of the
labor movement and of unions has been rather masculine. In
many countries, particularly in
northern Europe, Italy, Australia, and North America,
union membership is taking on a
female face (Eaton, 1992; Hastings and Coleman, 1992).
During the last decade, women
have made their way into positions of power in Australian
trade unions at a time when
overall union membership began to decline. The numbers of
women on the national peak
council, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, rose from
zero to one-third; in the State of
South Australia the three major white collar unions
(teachers, nurses, public servants) are all
currently led by women. All these gains have been made
since the mid-1980s (Franzway,
1994). The International Confederation of Free Trade
Unions (ICFTU) and the Public
Services International (PSI) have active women’s
departments – and now, so does the
AFL-CIO.
In global terms, the highest union density is found in
northern Europe – Denmark, Finland,
Norway, and Sweden – where women’s participation as
workers and as union officials is
the greatest. In those countries, union density is very
high in community, social and personal
services (68-87 percent), in trade, restaurants, and
hotels (47-49 percent), and in
manufacturing (80-100 percent), in both the public and
private sectors. Women are making
up an increasing share of union membership, especially in
services, with the most impressive
figures found in Denmark. Danish women represent 42 and 62
percent of the two main
union federations; they are 30 and 39 percent of the
delegates to the union Congress and 13
and 41 percent of members of leading committees, as well
as 10 and 30 percent of leaders
of individual unions (see Hastings and Coleman, 1992;
Klausen, 1997). On at least one
occasion that I know of during the 1990s, the Danish labor
movement sent an all-woman
delegation to the annual Congress of the International
Labour Organization in Geneva. In
Finland women comprise 45 percent of the membership of one
of the two labor
confederations (SAK); they also constitute about 37.5
percent of delegates to the SAK
Congress, and 40 percent of the union council. The
proportions of women in union
leadership positions are also increasing in Germany,
Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands,
France, and England.
Page 381
Journal of
World-Systems Research
Transnational Feminist Networks
Contemporary women’s movements constitute one of the most
prodigious areas of feminist
research in the disciplines of sociology and political
science. Jacquette shows how women’s
movements in Latin America were centrally involved in the
democratic transitions. A
cross-regional perspective on women’s movements is found
in Basu (1995). India’s
dynamic women’s movement and myriad women’s organizations
have long been the subject
of scholarly and political inquiry, with valuable studies
published by Indian scholars and by
Western scholars. I have researched the emergence of
women’s movements in the Middle
East and North Africa (Moghadam, 1997a, ch. 9). Many
studies have sought to explain the
rise of women’s movements in terms of women’s growing
educational attainment and
participation in the paid labor force, as well as in terms
of the contours of political cultures.
Few have examined the rise of transnational feminist
networks in an era of globalization (but
see Moghadam, 1996a). In my view, the emergence of
transnational feminism –
notwithstanding cultural, class, and ideological
differences among the women of the world –
is the logical result of the existence of a capitalist
world-economy in an era of globalization,
and the universal fact of gender inequality.
Interaction among feminist groups has been facilitated by
four world conferences on women
between 1975 and 1995, numerous regional preparatory
meetings, the participation of many
women's non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the UN
conferences of the 1990s,
concerns over increasingly harsh economic realities, and
use of the new information and
communication technologies. Feminist groups and women's
organizations remain rooted in
local issues, but their vocabulary, strategies and
objectives have much in common with each
other. They engage in information exchange, mutual
support, and a combination of lobbying,
advocacy and direct action towards the realization of
their goals of equality and
empowerment for women and social justice and societal
democratization. Two examples
may illustrate this. First, concerted action since the
late 1980s of networks including DAWN
and WIDE in opposition to structural adjustment policies
and the activities of the
international financial institutions in developing
countries, has forced the World Bank to
make important concessions
Page 382
Journal of
World-Systems Research
on gender and social issues. Second, pressure from WAPHA,
NOW and the Feminist
Majority was instrumental in preventing U.S. recognition
of the Taleban regime in
Afghanistan.
Contrary to the assertions of certain analysts of "new
social movements", women’s
movements and organizations are not necessarily
non-economic and identity-focused. The
transnational feminist networks I’ve described organize
around issues pertaining to the
economy, the political system, and foreign policy, as well
as reproductive rights and violence
against women. One reason may be the left-wing background
of some of the leading figures
in the networks; another reason may be precisely the fact
that these networks link
developing and developed countries. They have arisen in
the context of economic, political,
and cultural globalization – and they are tackling both
the particularistic and the hegemonic
trends of globalization. They are advancing criticisms of
inequalities and forms of
oppression, neoliberal economic policies, unsustainable
economic growth and consumption,
As Sen and Grown put it in a now-classic publication:
We know now from our own research that the
subordination of women has a long
history and is deeply ingrained in economic,
political, and cultural processes. What
we have managed to do in the last few years is to
forge grassroots women's
movements and world-wide networks such as never
existed before, to begin to
transform that subordination and in the process to
break down other oppressive
structures as well (Sen and Grown 1987, p.22.)
Transnational feminist networks include Network Women in
Development Europe (WIDE),
based in Brussels and consisting of 12 national branches;
Development Alternatives with
Women for a New Era (DAWN), based in the Caribbean and
with active branches in Latin
America and South Asia; Women Working Worldwide, a
coordinating group based in
London; the International Association for Feminist
Economics and the International
Women’s Tribune Center, both based in the United States;
the Asia-Pacific Research and
Resource Organization for Women (ARROW), based in Kuala
Lumpur; Women Living
Under Muslim Laws, based in Montpelier, France, and with
an active branch, Shirkat Gah,
in Lahore, Pakistan; ISIS International Women’s
Information and Communication Service,
with one center in Quezon City, Philippines, and another
in Santiago, Chile.
DAWN. Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era
was formed in 1985 and
consists of individuals and groups in Latin America,
Page 383
Journal of
World-Systems Research
the Caribbean, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Leading
figures are Peggy Antrobus in
Jamaica, Gita Sen in India, and Neuma Aguiar in Rio de
Janeiro. Two of the founding
members of DAWN now have senior positions in the United
Nations system: Noeleen
Heyzer of Malaysia is the head of UNIFEM, and Lourdez
Arizpe of Mexico is an assistant
director-general at UNESCO. DAWN has focused much of its
activity on two issues:
economic policy (especially its critique of structural
adjustment and the international financial
institutions) and reproductive rights and population
policy. DAWN has also published a
number of books on the above such issues. Members of DAWN
are very active in
international economic circles, where they try to
influence economic decision-making.
WLUML. Women Living Under Muslim Laws was also formed in
1985 and is an
international network of individuals and groups that
monitors the status of women in Muslim
countries, as well as Muslim women living elsewhere. It is
a secular, anti-fundamentalist
organization that largely emphasizes women’s human rights
issues. It disseminates action
alerts from France and a News Sheet from Pakistan, along
with other publications. Its
leading figures, including Marie-Aimée Hélie-Lucas (born
in Algeria) and Farida Shaheed
(Pakistani) are often invited to expert-group meetings
held by the UN or by European
governments.
WIDE. Network Women in Development Europe was also
established in 1985; its
members are women’s groups in the European countries, and
its secretariat is in Brussels.
Its focus is on development assistance and the global
economy, with a feminist critique of
economic theory and of European and U.S. trade and foreign
aid policies. In 1995 its
president, Helen O’Connell, was accredited to the official
conference in Beijing and
presented a statement during the General Exchange of
Views. Despite its critique of
European policy it has obtained considerable funding from
the European Union.
WEDO. Women’s Environment and Development Organization was
co-founded by the late
Bella Abzug in the period before the Earth Summit in Rio
de Janeiro, and is now led by
Susan Davis and based in New York. Its goal is "to make
women more visible as equal
participants, experts and leaders in policy-making from
the community to the international
level, and in formulating alternative, healthy, and
peaceful solutions to world problems."
WEDO co-chairs are based in Brazil, Guyana, Norway, Egypt,
Kenya,
Page 384
Journal of
World-Systems Research
Nigeria, Costa Rica, India, and New Zealand. WEDO is
currently engaged in monitoring
the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action
around the world.
Transnational feminist networks are the organizational
expression of the transnational
women’s movement, or global feminism. Global feminism may
be defined as the discourse
and movement of women aimed at advancing the status of
women through greater access to
resources, through legal measures to effect gender
equality, and through the
self-empowerment of women within national boundaries but
through transnational forms of
organizing and mobilizing. A vivid demonstration of
"global feminism on the ground" was the
myriad preparatory activities around the world for the
Fourth World Conference on
Women, and of course the participation of numerous women's
NGOs at the conference
itself. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action
may be regarded as the
"manifesto" of global feminism (Moghadam, 1996a).
Theoretical and Political Implications
Inasmuch as women have been organizing and mobilizing
against the particularistic and
hegemonic aspects of globalization, there are political
implications to what I have discussed
in this paper. In addition, there are theoretical
implications for development studies,
world-systems analysis, and social-movement theory.
I have argued that the capitalist world-economy functions
by means of the deployment of
labor that is waged and non-waged, formal and informal,
male and female. In recent
decades, the involvement of women in various kinds of
labor arrangements has been
striking. Capitalist accumulation is achieved through the
surplus-extraction of labor, and this
includes the paid and unpaid economic activities of women,
whether in male-headed or
female-headed households. The various forms of the
deployment of female labor reflect
asymmetrical gender relations and patriarchal gender
ideologies. Global accumulation as the
driving force of the world-system not only hinges on class
and regional differences across
economic zones, it is a gendered process as well,
predicated upon gender differences in the
spheres of production and reproduction. In an era of
economic globalization, the pressure
for greater competitiveness through lower labor and
production costs encourages the
demand for and supply of female labor.
Page 385
Journal of
World-Systems Research
However, in a reflection of the contradictions of
capitalism and of exploitation, the
involvement of women in the global economy and in national
labor forces has also served to
interrogate and modify gender relations and ideologies.
Organized and mobilized women –
both nationally and transnationally – are raising
questions about social and gender
arrangements and making demands on employers, governments,
and international financial
institutions. Many feminist organizations are middle-class
and often elite, but class lines are
increasingly blurred as women professionals and women
proletarians find common cause
around personal, economic, and social issues, including
violence against women, poverty,
job security, land rights, the redistribution and
socialization of domestic work, reproductive
health and rights, and women’s roles in decision-making.
In this connection, the study of gender and globalization
has implications for
social-movement theory as well – a theory that thus far
has been West-centered,
gender-blind, and focused on national events. First,
transnational feminist networks have
emerged in a multifaceted context of opportunities and
constraints: (a) a growing population
of educated, employed, mobile, and politically-aware women
around the world; (b)
increasing opportunities afforded by UN conferences; (c)
economic crisis and restructuring;
(d) continued discrimination, oppression, and gender
inequality, and (e) economic, political,
and cultural globalization. Second, transnational feminist
networks suggest that social
movements and social movement organizations may occupy a
supra-national or global
space. This calls into question theorizing that begins and
ends with single societies. One may
continue to argue the need for nationally-oriented
research and point out the continued
salience of nation-states and domestic organizations. But
nation-states, national economies,
and cultural formations – including social movements and
organizations – are increasingly
affected by globalization, with the result that the
appropriate unit of analysis must combine
global and local. Specifically, transnational feminism
suggests that social movements may
form, and organizations may mobilize, under a set of
global conditions, and not only in the
context of national opportunities and constraints.
REFERENCES
Beneria, Lourdes and Martha Roldan. 1987. The Crossroads
of Class and Gender:
Industrial Homework, Subcontracting, and Household
Dynamics in Mexico City.
University of Chicago Press.
Page 386
Journal of
World-Systems Research
Boris, Eileen and Elisabeth Prugl (eds.). 1996.
Homeworkers in Global Perspective.
Boserup, Ester. 1970 [second edition, 1987]. Women and
Economic Development. New
York: St. Martin’s Press.
Cinar, Mine. 1994. "Unskilled Urban Migrant Women and
Disguised Employment:
Homeworking Women in Istanbul, Turkey." World Development
22 (3): 369-380.
Cornia, Giovanni A., Richard Jolly and Frances Stewart
(eds.). 1987. Adjustment with a
Human Face. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
da Gama Santos, Margarida. 1985. "The Impact of Adjustment
Programmes on women in
Developing Countries." Public Enterprise, vol. 5, no. 3
(May): 287-297. Ljubljana:
International Center for Public Enterprises in Developing
Countries.
Eaton, Susan C. 1992. "Women Workers, Unions and
Industrial Sectors in North
America." Geneva: International Labour Office, IDP Women
Working Paper 1 (October).
Elson, Diane and Ruth Pearson. 1981. "Nimble Fingers Make
Cheap Workers: An Analysis
of Women’s Employment in Third World Export
Manufacturing." Feminist Review
(Spring): 87-107.
Elson, Diane (ed.). 1991. Male Bias in the Development
Process. London: Macmillan.
Employment Observatory: Trends. 1994. Bulletin of the
European System of
Documentation on Employment, no. 19.
Fernandez-Kelly, Patricia. 1994. "Broadening the Scope:
Gender and the Study of
International Development." In Kincaid and Portes, eds.,
Comparative National
Development. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina
Press.
Franzway, Suzanne. 1994. "Women Working in Australian
Unions." Paper prepared for the
International Sociological Association, RC44, Bielefeld,
Germany, 18-23 July.
Hastings, Sue and Martha Coleman. 1992. "Women Workers and
Unions in Europe: An
Analysis by Industrial Sector." Geneva: International
Labour Office, IDP Working Paper 4.
Joekes, Susan/INSTRAW. 1987. Women in the Global Economy:
An INSTRAW Study.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Kim, Seung-Kyung. 1997. Class Struggle or Family Struggle?
The Lives of Women
Factory Workers in South Korea. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Klausen, Jytte. 1997. "The Declining Significance of Male
Workers: Trade Unions
Responses to Changing Labor Markets." In Peter Lange, et
al., eds., Crisis and Conflict
in Contemporary Capitalism. Cambridge University Press.
Lim, Linda. 1985. Women Workers in Multinational
Enterprises in Developing
Countries. Geneva: ILO.
Marglin, Stephen and Juliet Schor eds. 1990. The Golden
Age of Capitalism. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Mies, Maria. 1986. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World
Scale. London: Zed
Books.
Moghadam, Valentine M. 1994. "Women and Identity Politics
in Theoretical and
Comparative Perspective." Pp. 3-26 in V. M. Moghadam, ed.,
Identity Politics and
Women: Cultural Reassertions and Feminisms in
International Perspective. Boulder,
CO: Westview Press.
Page 387
Journal of
World-Systems Research
-----. 1995. "Gender Aspects of Employment and
Unemployment in a Global Perspective."
In Mihaly Simai, ed., Global Employment: An Investigation
into the Future of Work.
London: Zed Books and Tokto: UNU Press.
-----. 1996. "Feminist Networks North and South: DAWN,
WIDE and WLUML."
Journal of International Communication, vol. 3, no. 1
(July): 111-121.
-----. 1997a. Women, Work and Economic Reform in the
Middle East and North
Africa. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
-----. 1997b. "The Feminization of Poverty? Notes on a
Concept and Trends." Illinois State
University Women’s Studies Program, Occasional Paper No. 2
(August).
Nash, June and Maria Fernandez-Kelly (eds.). 1983. Women,
Men, and the International
Division of Labor. Albany: SUNY Press.
Pearson, Ruth. 1992. "Gender Issues in Industrialization."
In Tom Hewitt, Hazel Johnson,
and David Wield, eds., Industrialization and Development.
Oxford: OUP
Pearson, Ruth and Swasti Mitter. 1993. "Employment and
working conditions of
low-skilled information-processing workers in
less-developed countries." International
Labour Review, vol. 132, no. 1: 49-64.
Safa, Helen. 1996. "Gender Inequality and Women’s Wage
Labor: A Theoretical and
Empirical Analysis." In V.M Moghadam, ed. Patriarchy and
Development. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Sklair, Leslie. 1991. A Sociology of the Global System.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ.
Press.
Standing, Guy. 1989. Global Feminization Through Flexible
Labor. World
Development, 17 (7): 1077-95.
Sparr, Pa.mela (ed.). Mortgaging Women’s Lives: Feminist
Critiques of Structural
Adjustment. London: Zed.
Tiano, Susan. 1994. Patriarchy on the Line: Labor, Gender,
and Ideology in the
Mexican Maquila Industry. Philadelphia: Temple University
Press.
UNDP. 1995. The Human Development Report 1995. New York:
OUP.
United Nations. 1991. World Economic Survey 1991. New
York: UN/DIESA.
______ 1995. The World’s Women 1995: Trends and
Statistics. New York: UN.
World Bank. 1995. World Development Report 1995: Workers
in an Integrating
World. New York: OUP.
World Development. Vol. 23, No. 11, 1995. Symposium on
Gender and Structural
Adjustment.
Page 388
Journal of World-Systems Research
Shop online without a credit card
http://www.rocketcash.com
RocketCash, a NetZero subsidiary
|
< < <
Date Index > > > |
World Systems Network List Archives at CSF | Subscribe to World Systems Network |
< < <
Thread Index > > > |