assignment #7

Book Title: Participation and Protest: Women and Politics in a Global World Author: Sarah L. Henderson and Alana S. Jeydel Chapter 8: Women and the Global Economy Introduction

Lutfa, a mother of two, lives in a slum on the western edge of Dhaka, Bangladesh's capital city. Lutfa, however, is better off than many women raising a family in the slums of the city. During a good month, she can earn up to 3,000 takas (about $50) a month, working in Bangladesh's export-oriented garment industry, which is barely enough to feed her family. She is not the only woman turning to this occupation; out of the 180 million people employed in Bangladesh's garment industry, 80 percent are women. Many of you reading this book are probably wearing an item made by a woman in a developing country. Is this an opportunity for further economic development or the exploitation of cheap, predominantly female workers who have little choice in determining their own future? Not surprisingly, the answer can be found in both interpretations.

Economic development is important because it is often a means to enabling citizens to live the kinds of lives they value. Yet, economic development is not a gender-neutral process. Women participate in and benefit from the process of socioeconomic development in different and predominantly unequal ways, which have resulted in enormous gender gaps in access to and control of resources. This in turn has fueled women's disproportionate burden of poverty around the world. Development agencies have been extremely active in trying to break the vicious cycle of poverty by increasing women's participation in and equality within the labor market. In this chapter, we look at the role of women in the expanding global economy and discuss ways that development agencies have sought to further empower women through access to employment.

Why should we worry about women's unequal status in the global economy? From a human rights perspective, women's unequal status should be a source of concern. In addition, increasing a woman's economic potential often increases her autonomy and power within the household, giving her a more equal status in decision making within the family. It also enables her to feed and care for her family. Finally, her activity contributes to the overall economic health of the nation. Many developing nations need to harness the full potential of all their citizens, not just predominantly their male ones.

On a positive note, over the past few decades, women's share in nonagricultural wage employment has increased in almost every region of the world. For example, between 1980 and 1999, women's share of the labor force in Pakistan rose from

22.7 percent to 28.1 percent, in Malaysia from 33.7 to 37.7 percent, and in Mexico from 26.9 to 32.9 percent. More broadly, in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean, women's participation grew from 27.8 to 34.6 percent, and in East Asia and the Pacific from 42.5 percent to 44.4 percent. And as of 2002, the World Bank estimates that women make up 40.4 percent of the labor force in developing countries. The United Nations, using different data, give an even higher estimate of 56 percent. As we mentioned previously, women's access to paid employment is important because it usually puts some money directly into the hands of women, thus increasing their abilities to make more decisions about their lives.

Yet, this increased activity does not necessarily signify progress in terms of women's equality; women often shoulder the burdens of economic development without always reaping the rewards. Worldwide, women make less than men. Around the world, women still earn about 75 percent as much as men. Of course, this average masks substantial differences; for example, while women in Sweden receive about eighty-three cents for every dollar that men make, these differences widen as one moves to developing countries. In Poland, women make 62 percent of men's salaries, and in Russia it is 64 percent. In Egypt, women's income is 39 percent of men's; in Mexico and Chile it is 38 percent. Saudi Arabia and Oman share the dubious honor of ranking at the very bottom of countries in terms of gender equity in pay; women there make 22 and 21 percent of men's incomes, respectively. As we shall see, women make substantially less than men in part because they are often segregated into low-paying, low-skilled jobs, often as a result of their lack of education and access to the formal economic sector. Discriminatory practices as well as cultural attitudes about women's inferior abilities also impact their access to employment. Further, if one factors in women's workloads outside of paid employment, women work longer hours than men. These initial figures are a crude indication of a global, sex-specific division of labor in which women often derive fewer economic benefits in exchange for greater workloads. The following sections elaborate on this data and discuss women's unequal labor status in the areas of industry and service, agriculture, and the often unpaid work of family care. Women in Industry and Service

With the rise of globalization has come a massive increase in world trade flows, particularly in manufactured goods. Exports in labor-intensive manufacturing have been rapidly expanding, with electronic components and the garment industry as the fastest-growing industries. These manufacturing jobs grew first in east Asian miracle economies and Mexico but soon spread to other parts of Asia and Latin America. In particular, the garment industry has taken off in Bangladesh, as well as Indonesia, Malaysia, Mauritius, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.

There is a gendered component to this economic growth; women tend to be ghettoized in these industries. While in the industrialized West, much attention is paid to the "glass ceiling" that prevents women from being promoted to the highest echelons of power, we sometimes forget that there is also a "sticky floor," which keeps millions of women in developed and developing countries trapped in low- skilled, low-paying jobs in light manufacturing and service industries. For example, the garment industry in many countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia or the electronics industry in Asia are industries that rely on cheap, unskilled labor provided predominantly by women to fuel profits. Women comprise 65 percent of the garment industry in Honduras, 70 percent in Morocco, 85 percent in Bangladesh, and 90 percent in Cambodia. The field of data entry and processing is populated overwhelmingly with women; for example, in the Caribbean, they make up the entire labor force. As we discussed in Chapter 4, women in the advanced industrialized countries are also often relegated to sex- segregated occupations that pay less and offer less job security. But this trend has been fostered further by the increased globalization of trade, in which goods and services are outsourced to far-flung regions of the world where labor costs are lower. These jobs are increasingly offered to women with no accompanying contract or benefits.

Women are highly valued by employers for this work; they often provide excellent services for lower pay than it would cost to employ a man. One study of the maquiladora industry in Mexico found that employers chose women employees over men because they were more dexterous and skilled at assembling small components at a rapid pace. In addition, employers prized women for their perceived submissiveness. Because fewer young women had had experience living on their own outside of the home, they rarely questioned the policies set down by management, often acquiescing rather than fighting decisions that would affect them adversely. Alternatively, older women who were the single providers for their small children recognized the nature of their poor working conditions, but continued to work in order to feed and clothe their families. Fighting for better working conditions threatened the livelihoods of their families, for whom they were responsible. For many, the costs of protesting were simply too high. Further, it is difficult for women workers to implement reform from within; they are still overrepresented at the bottom rungs of specific careers as well as underrepresented in positions of power in the areas of management or administration. As a result, they often do not occupy positions in which they could impact labor policy. For many laborers, men as well as women, all they have to offer is their cheap, predominantly unskilled labor, which often is not much of a bargaining chip for better conditions. There are often other people, desperate for paid employment,

willing to take their places. Yet, however bleak, many women perceive these conditions as an opening to

increased opportunities. While the conditions under which they work often violate international labor standards, nonetheless these employment options still offer an improvement on their precarious lives. Ana, a worker in a Honduran maquila, commented that "Even though the salaries are low, the maquilas give us employment -they help us to make ends meet." And this increasing economic power has implications for how women are treated in the family. According to one woman worker in a Bangladeshi factory, "in my mother's time women had to tolerate more suffering because they did not

have the means to become independent. They are better off now, they know about the world, they have been given education, they can work and stand on their own feet. They have more freedom." A study of more than thirty Bangladeshi garment factories found that two out of three women had some control of their earnings. This translates into increased decision-making power in the household, and sometimes a shift in gendered divisions of labor. On the one hand, while many of these women are trapped in low-wage jobs, struggling to access the promise of open borders and open markets, nonetheless the relocation of firms has opened up new forms of economic activity to women and opportunities for greater autonomy in decision making in the household. Women in The Shadow Economy

However, despite the previous discussion, it is difficult to quantify the value of women's activities within countries' economies because much of women's labor either is expended in the informal sectors of the economy or is hired illegally without notifying the proper authorities or paying the relevant taxes. For example, women who run small kiosks or stalls in markets rarely are incorporated into "formal" economic data. Nor are many women who work as paid domestic employees, such as maids or nannies, or as sex workers. These workers, as are many who work in industries discussed earlier, are often denied all of the benefits - secure contracts, unemployment, disability, and maternity- that can accrue from a position in the formal economy.

In fact, in developing countries, a much higher percentage of women who are active wage earners are informally employed. Sixty percent or more of women workers in the developing world are in informal employment (outside agriculture). The figure is highest in sub-Saharan Africa, where 84 percent of women nonagricultural workers are informally employed. In Latin America, the figure is 58 percent; only in North Africa do less than half (43 percent) of women workers labor in the informal sector, in part because of social customs that restrict women's

mobility. This is a growing area of women's employment, and the proportion of women who are self-employed in nonagricultural work is increasing faster than men's share.

Most women who tum to the informal sector for their livelihood are self- employed, for example, as street vendors, rather than engaged in wage work, such as domestic work or day labor. Their income for the day rests on their abilities to sell their skills, products, or other services for whatever fee they can negotiate. Some of these women are visible. They often line the streets of cities, towns, and villages in developing countries, selling their wares. Other times, they are busy at home, engaged in activities such as sewing, embroidery, or cigarette or incense rolling. Those that work for wages are visible in the developing as well as developed world as casual workers in hotels and restaurants, as piece rate workers in sweatshops, as temporary office helpers or off-site data processors, and as maids, childcare providers, and sex workers.

Increasingly, women's participation in the informal labor market has become internationalized, as women from the developing world relocate to the industrialized northern hemisphere in search of increased opportunities. In particular, southern hemisphere women have joined the ranks of the semi-invisible migrant, undocumented labor force that provide care and cleaning to middle-class families in the northern hemisphere. In many ways, this global migration is a result of the strides that feminist movements have made in the northern hemisphere; as Western women increasingly move into the workforce, they have had to contract out and pay for the labor that they once had performed for free. In turn, fathers and husbands have not fully compensated for this shift by assuming more responsibilities in the home. The result, as one scholar claims, is a gaping "care deficit," and many middle-class families pal poorer women to shoulder the burden of balancing work and family life. 1 Thus, in some ways, women's abilities to advance in the industrialized northern hemisphere are dependent on their abilities to simply transfer gendered divisions of labor to poorer women in the southern hemi- sphere looking for better employment opportunities than what their own countries can provide for them.

Women are overrepresented in the informal sector in part because it is more flexible. In addition, however, women have a much more difficult time gaining access to formal employment in developing countries because these jobs are coveted by and primarily filled by men, and so informal labor markets are often their only outlet for ensuring their economic survival. While this has opened doors for women, the absence of social safety nets makes it a short-term rather than a long-term solution for women's lack of economic independence.

Women in Agriculture In addition, agriculture is a major area of female employment in the developing

world. Drawing from data collected on sub-Saharan Africa, the United Nations estimates that about 60-70 percent of all food production and 50 percent of all animal husbandry is done by women. For example, women in Uganda produce 80 percent of the country's food and provide about 70 percent of total agricultural labor. Other estimates portray a lower, yet still significant, female contribution to farming. For example, another researcher estimates that women contributed approximately 40 percent of family farm labor in Ghana, Sierre Leone, Liberia, Algeria, and Tunisia. In parts of Asia, such as Thailand and Korea, women contribute close to half of all family farm labor. In contrast, in Latin America, farm labor carried out exclusively by women is much lower, although much labor is handled jointly by men and women. Yet, despite the fact that women represent a large proportion of the agricultural labor force, and produce a larger percentage of its food, few of these women are integrated into development projects; a study of women in agriculture in Africa found that while women produce about 70 percent of Africa's food, only 20 percent of these women are the direct recipients of extension advice.

Women also increasingly make up the bulk of migrant labor in fresh produce global supply chain, comprising 65 percent of the labor force in Colombia, 75 percent in Kenya, and 87 percent in Zimbabwe. These women tend to be in "permanently temporary" positions, working long-term on short-term, seasonal jobs. For example, women make up 69 percent of all seasonal workers in South Africa, but only 26 percent of long-term employees. In tum, employers point out that the demands of the increasingly globalized economy means that they must continue to find ways to slash production costs. As one South African apple farmer, who exports to the United Kingdom's biggest supermarket, Tesco, explained, "The only ham left in the sandwich is our labour costs. If they squeeze us, it's the only place where we can squeeze." Thus, hiring women on temporary contracts, with few to no benefits, is the only way they feel they can compete. While the globalized economy enables women's employment, it is often on the punishing terms of free trade rather than fair trade. Women's Unpaid Work

It is also difficult to quantify the value of women's activities within countries' economies because much of women's labor is entirely unremunerated. Women all around the world balance a number of jobs. Not only do they produce, they also reproduce, and many of them continue their work after their paid jobs with their unpaid careers as heads and caretakers of the household. Buying supplies for,

feeding, and caring for a family is still seen as women's work for many families in the developing as well as developed world.

However, while much progress needs to be made even in the wealthiest countries of the world, this problem is particularly severe in developing countries, where lack of money and technological innovations that save time and a culture that reinforces a strict household division of labor mean that women face long, if not longer, work shifts after their paying job has ended for the day. Particularly in very low-income countries, women spend long hours collecting fuel and water. This often cuts into time that can be spent engaging in activities that could improve the quality of their lives. This situation is particularly dire for young girls, who often have to lessen their time in or forgo school altogether in order to help with household work.

Performing women's work in the home also has health implications. More than half the world's households cook with wood, crop residues, or untreated coal. Because work in the home is often women's work, women and children are the primary targets of indoor air pollution. This problem is serious; not only can it lead to a number of health problems, such as respiratory infections and blindness, but it can, and often does, lead to death. In developing countries, nearly 2 million women and children die each year as a result of exposure to indoor air pollution.

Women's "double burden" is also significant in that their reproductive work has typically been excluded from economic analysis. Economists have tended to view women's work in maintaining the household as a "natural" aspect of women's roles and as not being "work" because it is so often unpaid. As a result, much of the economic data collected on countries (and presented in this book!), particularly in the developing world, misrepresent women's participation in and contribution to a country's economy. This is particularly true, given that women are much more likely to work within the informal sector, subsistence economies, and the unpaid work involved in reproduction and care of the household. In fact, the UN Development Programme has estimated that women's "invisible" output amounts to $11 billion. Expanding the definition of work to include women's full work days adds up to an equivalent to an extra 48 percent of the world's gross domestic product. That is a lot of unpaid hours.

In addition, broadening our definition of what constitutes "labor" also causes us to reassess the level and nature of women's participation in work-forces all over the world. For example, in the Dominican Republic census in 1981, the rural female labor force participation rate was 21 percent. However, one study included activities such as homestead cultivation and livestock care, an area of unpaid, household labor traditionally assigned to women. This broadened definition raised

women's participation rates to 84 percent. In India, narrow and extended definitions of labor places women's participation rates at 13 percent and 88 percent, respectively. And in Pakistan, a separate survey documented a 45.9 percent participation rate (as opposed to the official 13.9 percent rate) when labor was broadened to include such tasks as rearing livestock, collecting firewood and fetching water, making clothes, and undertaking domestic work on a paid basis. Women and Economic Crisis

Women's role as caretakers is also called upon (and stretched to the limit) in times of economic crisis. Further, women respond differently to and are affected differently by economic down turns. This was particularly so in the 1980s and 1990s, when many countries began to implement what are known as structural adjustment programs (SAPs). Initially pushed by international lending agencies such as the International Monetary Fund, structural adjustment programs were the expression of a neoliberal, promarket approach that emphasizes making internal economic and political reforms to help the domestic economy be more competitive in the global marketplace. In particular, lending institutions such as the IMF advanced loans to countries only when they could meet certain conditions that theoretically would reduce trade barriers and stimulate economic growth. Some of these conditions were reduced social expenditures, increased focus on export-led growth and resource extraction, currency devaluation against the dollar, removal of import and export restrictions, opening of domestic markets to foreign investment, balancing budgets, privatization of critical state-owned industries, and removing price controls and state subsidies. In sum, SAPs called for decreased government intervention in the economy, decreased government spending in favor of balanced budgets, and an embrace of global free market forces.

The results of these reforms for many countries were devastating and caused many to go more deeply into debt without reaping the rewards of economic growth. Many countries' increased focus on export-led growth reaped few rewards, given that prices for commodities and raw materials on the global marketplace were falling, rather than rising. Devaluation often severely weakened domestic currencies, and domestic prices spiraled in turn, leading to rampant inflation. Privatization often resulted in a net loss of jobs, as new owners in the private sector laid off workers to try to reduce costs. And cuts on government expenditures slashed services to citizens often most in need. Finally, corrupt governments squandered or embezzled the loans, ensuring that future generations would be held hostage to crippling debt loads.

Women were particularly vulnerable to these reforms, which increased their work load, not only in their paid work responsibilities, but for their unpaid

responsibilities in the home. Women tried to increase their paid work to compensate for rising male unemployment and increased cost of living. In addition, women's unpaid labor increased to compensate for cutbacks in public services. For example, women assumed the responsibility of caring for sick relatives, who previously might have received care from a doctor or hospital. In addition, women had to find ways to substitute for food and clothing the household could no longer afford. In sum, the financial backlash when fragile economies in newly opened societies fail creates new stresses and strains for women, who must often bear the brunt of financial dislocation. Advancing Women's Equality

Development agencies are aware of the gendered nature of these economic inequalities; however, it is often easier to recognize the problem than design an effective solution. A good place to start is identifying the reasons why women's inequalities exist; if we can address some of these underlying factors, then perhaps it will be possible to then change employment patterns. However, there is no single reason why women often come out as second-class citizens with regard to economic development. Depressingly, the World Bank estimates that only about one-fifth of the wage gap can be explained by gender differences in education, work experience, or job characteristics; rather, they argue, the pervasive power of prejudice and discrimination against women accounts for much of women's second-class economic status. Other issues, such as the unequal division of labor in the household, further impact women's abilities to gain equality in the workforce. This suggests that the target of development policy needs to be focused on society at large, rather than solely on women.

However, education still is a factor in explaining women's unequal access to economic resources, and development agencies have focused on increasing women's access to education, which is still quite low. According to a UNICEF study, nearly two out of three children in the developing world who do not get primary education are girls. For those children who are enrolled, female-to-male enrollment rates are 84 percent. As one progresses through the different levels of the education system, those inequalities become more severe; girls may complete primary school, but are pulled out of school later on if they are needed at home or in the fields to supplement family income, allowing the boys to stay in school. The United Nations has made girls' and women's education a key goal and has produced dramatic results in Latin America, southeast Asia, and the Pacific. Arab states and south Asian countries exhibit the lowest levels of female-to-male literacy.

Another factor that inhibits gender equality is access to the appropriate

resources, such as land and credit. In particular, land titling is particularly problematic. Women are often barred from owning the title to land, even when they are its primary users. This means that they are then unable to use the land as collateral for credit, a strategy available to many male farmers trying to expand their business. In addition, women's access to land is often based on their marital status; as a result, unmarried and divorced women are rarely named on title deeds. The World Bank has begun to address this issue by sponsoring a pilot project in north central Vietnam that gives both women and men rights to use land. In two rural communities in Nghe An province, land tenure certificates (LTCs) for households are being reissued with the names of both the wife and the husband, allowing both to take advantage of the opportunities that such property rights can bring to the well-being of the rural economy.

In addition, women are barred from other forms of borrowing, and thus are unable to start up small businesses that would help stimulate economic growth, not only for them, but also for their country's economy. One popular solution to this issue has been the funding of microcredit projects, which give very small loans to entrepreneurs, primarily women, who are too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. One of the most well-known examples of this approach is the Grameen Bank, a nonprofit located in Bangladesh. As of July 2004, it has reached 3.7 million borrowers, 96 percent of whom are women. In addition to granting loans to women, it asks them to adopt the "16 decisions," a set of principles designed to advance overall levels of well-being among women and their families. For example, women must promise to strive to keep their families small, to grow nutritious food, to educate their children, and to decline to participate in the dowry system. While the bank does not enforce these decisions, nonetheless it sees its loans as a small part of a larger process of changing the way that women and men live their lives in Bangladesh. Microcredit as a development strategy has spread to many countries around the world, and while many organizations focus solely on the lending component of the program, it has nonetheless provided a small but critical resource to help women escape from the continuing cycle of poverty.

Further, women themselves are mobilizing in reaction to the negative ramifications of an increasingly globalized economy. Transnational networks, such as Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), Women in Development in Europe (WIDE), and Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) have advocated for globalization with a "human face." That is, globalization does not have to entail unfettered trade and economic growth at all costs, but can be combined with an emphasis on human development and regulations on trades and markets. They have all worked closely with the United Nations and other multilateral agencies such as the World Bank to influence

development policy. Partially as a result of their advocacy, the United Nations, in 1995, began to focus on gender equality and inequality within the parameters of its annual Human Development Report. It now produces two new indices to measure levels of gender inequality-the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) and the Gender Development Index (GDI). Further, the World Bank has dramatically increased its attention to gender issues in its development projects and also now has a "women in development" section in its annual publication of World Development Indicators. These data have been invaluable in pushing development agencies to focus continually on women's persistent unequal status in the process of economic development. Conclusion

Even though women are entering the labor force in increasing numbers, they are paid less than men and are segregated into low-skill, low-paying jobs. The reasons for women's differing status in the economy are varied; persistent cultural values, discriminatory practices, and undereducation are just a few reasons why women are underutilized in some areas of economic production and overutilized in others. As the global economy becomes increasingly interdependent, women have become the lynchpin of the economy. As wage laborers, they fuel the global economy by working primarily in low-skilled, low-wage jobs outsourced from the West. Alternatively, they travel to Western industrialized nations, willing to work for low pay, in search of better lives. In their traditional roles as wives and mothers, they hold the family together in times of economic crises. While women have improved their economic status, they have yet to reach any form of gender parity with men.