Literature review: the future of work: women and politics

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B r i n g i n g W o m e n ’ s V o i c e s i n t o t h e D i a l o g u e o n T e c h n o l o g y P o l i c y

a n d G l o b a l i z a t i o n i n A s i a SWA ST I M IT TER A ND SH EIL A R OW BO T HA M University of Sussex, UK and Manchester, UK

Ab stra ct This article documents an innovative research project ‘Monitoring the Impact of Technological Changes in Women’s Employment in the Asian Region’. Initiated in 1994 by the United Nations University Institute for New Technologies (UNU/INTECH), the project sought to democratise the dialogue around technological changes and globalization by bringing together NGOs active among women workers, academic researchers and policy makers. It was guided by the assumption that those affected by the impact of new technologies should play a major part in making and implementing policy. Women workers, for example, should be able to lay claim to the knowledge which circulates through international organizations, while national and international policy makers stand to gain by listening directly to groups such as these who frequently are excluded from the bene�ts of globalized technological changes. Twenty-eight trade union and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) worked alongside experienced researchers, covering eight countries and holding a series of both country-based and international workshops. The �rst research project to attempt direct inter-communication on such an extensive scale, ‘Monitoring the Impact of Technological Changes in Women’s Employment in the Asian Region’ shifted the debate on gender and technology onto the terrain of the actual problems and possibilities currently faced by women workers rather than adopting positions for or against technology. The collaborative research process highlights several priority areas of policy dialogue which have been neglected and indicate ways of organizing which could secure better conditions of work. The evidence uncovered and the concerns expressed raise fundamental questions about whose interests and values are shaping the emerging techno-economic paradigm.

K ey w o rd s technological change, globalization, women workers, women’s NGO’s, international networking, the democratization of knowledge

I NT RO D U CT I O N

Discussion of ‘globalization’ has focused primarily on the economic aspects of information and communication technologies, which led to the dramatic transformation sometimes, called a third industrial revolution. The nature of the metamorphosis, which has occurred through an acceleration of international linkages in trade and finance and the digitalisation of information – the outcome of computer technologies – has been the subject of vigorous debate during the last decade. However the broad economic consequences are palpable. It has become more possible to decentralise and fragment production and much easier to operate manufacturing and services across national boundaries so that the processes of production no longer need to be locally situated. Moreover the various production processes can be spread among satellite companies or subcontracting units in other countries where wages are lower and employment legislation is not strictly imposed or monitored. The new technologies facilitate the management of dispersed units of production within or across national borders in a cost-effective way.

The globalization of investment and of �nance capital, has thus speeded up the phenomenon of outsourcing which lies at the heart of, and in turn shapes the current phase of globalization. Increasingly af�liates of the transnational corporations handle actual production while the large transnational corpora- tions limit their activities to controlling the retail outlets and their marketing image. This trend has been accompanied by management practices such as ‘lean management’ and ‘downsizing’. These encourage companies to keep the size of their core work force as small as possible, and to rely on �exible, or ‘atypical’ workers in order to keep the �xed cost low and respond readily to changing demands.1

Much less attention however has been devoted to the consequences for the daily lives and consciousness of the human beings caught up in the wide scale social upheavals which have accompanied globalization.2 It is evident that the move towards organizational flexibility does not necessarily bode well for the workforce, as the number of workers in the formal sector dwindles making it dif�cult for workers to engage in collective bargaining or to negotiate with the state for employment rights. The restructuring of work organization has had adverse effects on trade unions and also been accompanied by a decline in the forms of social protection provided through state welfare. The numbers of workers outside any social safety net or defensive organization have been swollen by �exible working practices, outsourcing, relocation and structural unemployment. 3

The economic transformation of the last decade – loosely de�ned as global- ization – is frequently presented as possible only in an economic and political context in which no restraint is placed on capital.4 However as the economist Gita Sen observes, ‘the imperative of “globalize or perish”‘ obscures ‘the negative fall outs of unregulated capital’. (Sen in Gothoskar et al. 1998: 1–2). One result of this tendency towards uncritical celebration has been that the destructive

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social consequences that have accompanied technology-led globalization have been marginalized in policy-oriented discussions and research.5

T HE IM P A CT O N W O M EN

Internationally, it has been environmental and women’s groups, which have played a leading part in challenging the inevitability, ascribed to a globalizing process based on an uncritical faith in the bene�ts of technological advance.6 Feminist researchers have also insisted, quite rightly, that analyses of changes in production and the growing inequality of wealth must include a gender lens.7 The popular term ‘the feminization of poverty’, however, places the emphasis exclusively on gender and is misleading; it expresses only part of the total picture, which is also affected by class, ethnicity and race.8 Women workers are certainly concentrated among the hidden millions working in low paid sweated work in the manufacture of garments, shoes and toys and in the informal sector as homeworkers or as vendors.9 However, there are differentiated consequences appearing among women in the workforce, not only in the North but also in the South.10 Cecilia Ng and Carol Yong’s comment in the context of Malaysia has a wider relevance.

Women are not being inevitably pushed into low-skill dead end jobs as a result of automation, as the argument that capital makes use of existing patriarchal relations has asserted. The trends are more diverse.

(Ng and Yong 1995: 201)

While low level operations are being feminized, an educated minority are slowly gaining access to ‘middle level professional and management positions’. (Ng and Yong in Mitter and Rowbotham 1995: 201). These are the groups that tend to be cited by the optimists who presume that technological change is inherently emancipatory. However, only a minority of women are able to utilize educational advantage in this way and even the new factory jobs are accessible mainly to the young. So, just as those firms or countries able to introduce new technology accelerate faster, a comparable disparity opens up within the work force, between men and women but also among women themselves. Rather than opting for an uncritical optimism or adopting a sweeping pessimism, The UNU/INTECH project set out to chart the differentiated impact of new technologies.

The project also registered the wider implications of economic and social innovations and recognized the dynamic character of their impact. The intro- duction of advanced technology does not only affect those who actually work with it, but alters the work and livelihoods of many more whom it passes by. Their conditions worsen disproportionately, with the result that social exclusion is becoming a global phenomena. Moreover, the consequences for workers of economic restructuring and deindustrialization are changing very fast. Thus the ‘included’ of one decade can �nd themselves becoming the excluded of

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the next. For instance in Hong Kong, women who were recently swept into manufacturing industry, are now being made redundant at a faster rate than the men. In a study sponsored by the Hong Kong Federation of Women, Withering Away of the Hong Kong Dream, Stephen W.K. Chiu and Ching Kwan Lee have documented ‘the human consequences’ (Chiu and Lee, 1997: 4) adapting Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb’s phrase ‘the hidden injuries of class’11 to this new context. They note that in the long term the social conse- quences of ignoring women’s voices ‘ . . . will be enormous and non-recoverable in the future’. (Chiu and Lee 1997: 43) Grassroots researchers are reporting comparable cases of workers caught within the maelstrom of ‘globalization’ in many parts of the world, yet their �ndings are largely absent from debates on economic policy.12

O P ENI NG A D I A L O G U E

In order to redress this lacuna, the United Nations University Institute for New Technologies’ project ‘Monitoring the Impact of Technological Changes in Women’s Employment in the Asian Region’, reached out to groups of women who were already engaged in action around women’s employment in Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. From 1994 the project, which was funded by UNIFEM and by the Netherlands government and co-ordinated by Swasti Mitter in collaboration with a group of researchers, held both country-based workshops and a series of international workshops.

Rather than simply sending professional researchers to study the impact of globalization and technological changes, the UNU /INTECH project tried to build upon and enhance the existing skills of the many voluntary organizations which are in close contact with working women. The scholars involved in the research process had themselves experience of activism and the project aimed to develop a dialogue in which a wider range of women’s voices could be heard than those which customarily reach international development forums or national policy bodies. The action research groups which participated ranged from the Self Employed Women’s Association in India, which organizes 200 thousand workers in the informal sector, to HUMANIKA, an Indonesian educa- tional and consciousness raising group, to the Korean Women’s Association for Democracy and Sisterhood which includes housewives and clerical workers. Also involved were groups such as the Vietnam Women’s Union and the Women Workers’ Committee of the All China Federation of Trade Unions and the All China Women’s Federation. In these transitional economies independent NGOs do not exist, however the older women’s and labour organizations which were formerly part of the Communist regimes are beginning to take on new roles. The obvious disparities among the participants meant taking on board the evident ambiguities and complexities in the category ‘voluntary organizations’, a term which actually spans very different structures.

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As Cecilia Ng observes, this combination of diverse types of groups and organizations alongside professional researchers, meant that ‘Monitoring the Impact of Technological Changes in Women’s Employment in the Asian Region’, ‘ . . . was no ordinary academic research involving scholars undertaking studies in their respective �elds of expertise. (Ng 1996: 1).

A consistent feature was the connection between various kinds of research into technology and policy.

Each stage of the UNU /INTECH project was carefully planned. The �rst task was to provide a forum in which NGOs working closely with women workers in Asia could exchange their experiences. It was seen as vital to give them an opportunity to articulate their vision of how to counteract the negative consequences of technology-led globalization. (See Banerjee and Mitter 1998) The �rst international workshop was held in Kuala Lumpur in 1994 and enabled the NGOs to share their knowledge of the needs of women in relation to new technologies and the effect of changing patterns of work such as the growth of sub-contracting and homeworking. The Kuala Lumpur workshop created a space in which demands could be formulated and aspirations voiced in an international context.

The second phase concentrated on bringing together policy makers from the Asian countries selected and aimed to create an environment in which government agencies could assess the limitations and effectiveness of current legislation in minimising the social threats of the open market and globalization. In 1995 UNU INTECH thus organized an international workshop in New Delhi which covered government policies on economic development and labour market conditions. The third, in Bangkok, in 1996 sought to open up a dialogue between NGOs and state policy makers; two very different constituencies which up until this time had tended to conduct discussions of globalization quite separately. The findings of these three workshops were synthesised in New Technologies and the Future of Women’s Work in Asia, (1994), Industrial Policies for the 21st Century: New Technology and Women’s Work, New Technologies (1995) and Bridging the Gap. Between the State and Non- Governmental Organisations (1996).

The lack of precedents for dialogue between NGOs and government bodies made preparation an extremely important priority for the research project. Only the trade unions were accustomed to meeting on an international basis with government policy makers; women in NGOs had little experience of such meetings. So, in order to provide them with negotiating skills, a series of country-based workshops complemented the international workshops. The country-based meetings aimed to prepare the ground for the �nal workshop in Bangkok in 1996. The structuring of the project thus involved counter balancing inequalities by putting resources into enhancing the opportunity of women NGOs to learn from one another and gain access to international research.

‘Monitoring the Impact of Technological Changes in Women’s Employment in the Asian Region’ took cognizance of how experience gathered in women’s

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grassroots groups and international networks could provide vital insights for policy making in both the national and international contexts. The UNU/ INTECH project adapted, on a large scale, the participatory approach undertaken before in smaller pieces of research by women’s international networks. Though of course local groups could never have covered eight countries and followed up the studies in depth through research and workshops; nor would they usually have been able to bring NGOs face to face with national and international policy making bodies.

M O NI T O RI NG T EC HNO L O G IC A L C HA NG ES

Not only did ‘Monitoring the Impact of Technological Change in Women’s Employment in the Asian Region’ seek to extend and democratise debates on globalization, it also took a wide interpretation of technological learning. The long-term aim was to ensure that women shared equally in the material bene�ts of new technologies and in the social and political power these involve.

An immediate problem was, however, that remarkably little research exists into the impact of new technology on women’s employment in Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malasia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. The UNU/ INTECH project was thus breaking new ground. The complex picture which emerged from its �ndings is encapsulated by Cecilia Ng,

The shift to more knowledge based production has not impacted uniformly on women nor on men. Some have gained while others have lost. New jobs have been created for women but others face vulnerable forms of employment. Women have found employment especially in the growing service sectors (eg Vietnam and Malaysia) and have even developed hi-tech homeworking as in the case of Korean professionals in the publishing industry. At the same time thousands of Korean women have been retrenched as a result of the automation and down sizing in the light industrial sector. Many of these are older women who do not have the skills to enter the new technology multi-skilled jobs. There is also a trend towards production decentralisation, subcontracting and the development of small scale industry, where �exible work is the rule rather than the exception . . .

(Ng 1996: 4)

There was evidence, which indicated that the access of women to technology has differed from that of men. Geraldine Reardon, a trade union researcher who summarised some of the findings of the project in a monograph entitled, Globalization, Technological Change and Women Workers in Asia, notes a clear ‘technological cycle’. (Reardon 1998: 23). Men get the jobs first and then ‘Women get jobs that utilise lower technology, are less prestigious and are paid less.’ (Reardon 1998: 23). Reporting on China, Zhou Meihe and Guo Haiyan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences give instances of this gendered entry into the new computer industry in China:

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In the Shenzhen subsidiary of the Legend Group, 52 percent of the 600 employees are women. Only one-�fth of departmental managers are women, and all middle- level personnel, such as workshop directors and foremen are men. On the other hand, 100 percent of workers in the plug-in process are women, and testing is done mostly by women.

(Ng and Muroro Kua 1994: 66)

They also describe conditions in the private Special Economic Zones (SEZs) backed by foreign capital. Workers, many of whom are young women, are accommodated in less than two square metres by the entreprises in Shenzhen. The Chinese women work 10 to 12 hours a day without a day off, and there are frequent accidents at work. In Vietnam 68 percent of the employees in the new private sector are women. Hours vary from 4–5 when work is slack to 13–14 hours. Zhou Meihe, Guo Haiyan along with Le Thi from the Vietnamese Centre for Family and Women’s Studies, demonstrate that other women meanwhile, in China and in Vietnam, in both factories and of�ces are being laid off as a result of the transition to a market economy and technological change (Ng and Muroro Kua 1994: 66).

Not only have millions of women been shifted into unknown circumstances, they are facing a whole set of unfamiliar problems. At the workshop co- ordinated by the Sri Lankan Muslim Women’s Research and Action Forum in Colombo in 1995, Rohini Hensman noted,

Some of the health hazards associated with these technologies, such as chemical hazards in electronic assembly and Repetitive Strain Injury for those working at computer terminals – are not envisaged or dealt with by existing legislation.

(Hanifa 1996: 4)

Persatuan Sahabat Wanita Selangor, a group formed to help organize women workers in the Malaysian electronic factories in the Free Trade Zones found cancer, leukaemia and chronic respiratory disorders, (Ng and Muroro Kua 1994: 38).From Korea, the Women’s Association for Democracy and Sisterhood, which organizes housewives and clerical workers, reported that 60.6 percent of insurance workers complained of RSI symptoms. (Ng and Muroro Kua 1994: 43) Among factory workers , according to the Korean Women Workers’ Association,

Health problems cited include, pains in the shoulders, fingers and wrists, inflammation of ankles and knees, gastro-intestinal problems, and bronchial complaints.

(Ng and Muroro Kua 1994: 45)

The less tangible psychological implications of the effect of modernisation on life-patterns and women’s self-identity were also raised by the research of the NGOs and expressed in the country-based workshops. One of these held in New

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Delhi in 1995 was partly organized by Action India, a community group which works with women and the young locally. Members of its Women’s Programme, Sumitra, Gouri Choudhury and Tara Negi, with help from researchers, Amrita Chhachhi and Kawalijit Singh, produced a report, ‘Left Behind in a Changing World’. The study is based on the experiences of a community of handloom weavers in the Aligarh and Bulandsher Districts in Uttar Pradesh, Northern India, where traditionally, in family-based units; it was women who did the spinning while men were in charge of weaving. The women spinners are known as ‘charkawalees’, which means ‘women who operate the ‘charka’ or spinning wheel. The study describes how the handloom workers have been overwhelmed by competition from the power loom industry. Unable to develop new designs and products and under increasing pressure because of economic liberalisation since 1992, they have been handicapped by the increased cost of cotton yarn. Despite the government’s reserved quota system, the result of the export of raw cotton was to be a dramatic rise in the price of the yarn (the cost rose by 300 percent between 1985 and 1995). Marginalized by the mill owners’ control of hank yarn and blocked from access to new technology through their lack of education and resources, the lives of the weavers and their families have been devastated.

The Action India study documented the profound sense of uselessness and despair which this had created among the handloom weavers; their demoral- ization was accompanied by problems of drink and gambling among the men, while the women suffered both from domestic violence and the nagging anxieties of poverty.

When asked what they thought about the future, the majority of the women said that there was no time to think. Their marginalization excluded them from any sense of a future. ‘What is left to think about ourselves?’ (Action India 1995: 38) asks Kela at the age of 40. A minority refused this annihilation of their humanity, but the cost of struggling for comprehension was a painful realization of being abandoned people. Reflection brought no solutions. Shakuntala, a woman of 33, stated, ‘I think a great deal, but what’s the point?’(Action India 1995: 38). Another Sona Devi, at 50, kept ‘thinking what have we achieved, the children are educated, but to what end? Even after studying they continue to be wage workers on other peoples’ power looms.’(Action India, 1995: 39). The implications of economic restructuring upon the identities and aspirations of the human beings who find themselves left behind have received even less attention than quanti�able facts such as the extent and conditions of women’s employment.

Gouri Choudhury, in a retrospective summary for the international- level workshop in 1996, explained that it had been Sumitra’s question ‘What is the future of our children?’ (Choudhury 1996: 11) which had initiated the research. Through investigation and discussion over a two year period,

Sumitra, a charkhawalee turned social activist . . . reached the following conclu- sion. “Weavers have always endeavoured to improve their tools. That is to increase

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their production to earn more money, with less labour and time. But the new technologies developed by scientists and engineers are beyond the reach of weavers”.

(Choudhury 1996: 11)

Gouri Choudhury concluded that it was indeed the inequality and elitism in the ‘ . . . structure of technological development’. (Choudhury 1996: 11) which allowed whole communities to be dispensable.

At the country-based workshop organized by UNU /INTECH and Action India in New Delhi in 1995, Chandni Joshi from UNIFEM stressed the need for research to be a two-way process:

We have a saying in Nepal: To make a perfect rice cake, we need a strong �ame from below and heat from the top to make it rise.

(Gothoskar 1996: 2)

Activist researchers – Sujata Gothoskar, from the Workers’ Solidarity Centre, Mumbai, and Rohini Hensman, who has written on women’s employment and trade unions and Gouri Choudhury of Action India – edited the report of the workshop, and they observe that Chandni Joshi’s metaphor captures,

. . . the essential connection between the macro plans on the one hand and the every day ground reality on the other: between those who make the policies and those whose lives are affected by them or remain untouched.

(Gothoskar 1996: 2)

This approach to research was especially fitting for a project, which was essentially about the control over knowledge.

A P P R OA C HE S T O T ECH NO L OG Y

The series of workshops held in the course of the project grappled with contra- dictory assumptions about technology. On the one hand many people in poor countries regard technology as a panacea, while on the other some radical groups and ecofeminists profoundly suspect it.13 Sujata Gothoskar engaged with these con�icting views in the New Delhi country-based workshop in 1995, arguing that technology should not be seen as a mechanically determining factor, but a force created and used in speci�c social contexts. She was critical of those who assumed that ‘by itself’ (Gothoskar 1996: 6) technology would address poverty, malnutrition, employment and discrimination. But she also rejected the assumption that it had therefore nothing positive to offer. If the optimists dismissed inequality, the pessimists in their turn disregarded the suffering which came from the malnutrition, over-work and ill-health caused by lack of access to the right kind of technology. The key issue was the type of technology and who controlled how it was introduced.

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Renana Jhabvala, from the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), Ahmedabad, an organization which has repeatedly challenged myths that illiterate poor women could not be trusted with modern tools, money or decision making, also spoke at the 1995 New Delhi workshop. She listed several examples, which illustrated the signi�cant improvements which basic technologies could make if the users had control over them. SEWA had helped poor landless rural women to get land, but they had been allowed access only to sparse, barren ground. By contacting the local agricultural university a seasonal rotation of crops, fodder and fruit trees had been worked out which enabled the women to farm. Nursery technology and water technology had made the women’s lives much easier. Another instance was SEWA’s Health Workers’ Cooperative which made low cost allopathic medicines available to poor communities and drew on a combination of allopathic, ayurvedic and homeopathic health knowledge. While it was important to build on women’s existing knowledge, Renana Jhabvala also argued that women workers needed access to technology, to resources, and to markets (Gothoskar 1996: 7). The women SEWA organises are excluded from the wide range of learning activities which contribute to developing technological capabilities. These involve the capacity to choose appropriate technologies, the effective use of them and the marketing skills necessary to sell goods. SEWA’s approach is that modernity does have bene�cial consequences for women, but only if people are placed at the centre of how modernity is conceived and implemented.

In the report produced by UNU/INTECH, New Technologies and the Future of Women’s Work in Asia (1994), Shirin Akhter from the National Workers’ Federation (JSJB), a trade union in Bangladesh, suggested how trade unions could not only monitor and challenge health and safety, but could make demands for training and re-training schemes a priority for workers displaced through technology. In Bangladesh automation had affected many women workers because they lacked ‘access to the acquisition of skills and technological knowledge’ (Ng 1994: 7). She added ‘ . . . efforts are needed to ensure women obtain gender-equal access to any gains from technology’ (Ng 1994: 8). Unions could also ‘support women’s efforts to gain education, training and skills’ (Ng 1994: 8). Shirin Akhter did not see technology as just being the hardware of machines, computers or equipment but as having a wider meaning; the ‘knowledge, ideas, and skills that help the development and use of an earlier technology’ (Ng Choon Sim 1994: 7).

The implications of how knowledge is approached were taken up by the economist and historian Nirmala Banerjee, who has been involved in the women’s movement and supported many women workers and NGOs struggles. Her article with Swasti Mitter ‘Women Making a Meaningful Choice: Tech- nology and the New Economic Order’, re�ected on the �ndings of the project in India. While recognising that modernization often destroys traditional life styles of people without providing them with an access to the newly emerging opportunities, Banerjee and Mitter reject the idealization of ‘tradition’ which has characterized some eco-feminist writing and certain strands within the left and

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postmodernism. They challenge an unquestioning acceptance of traditional knowledge theoretically and practically, showing how it is at once ahistorical and has often led to anti-progressive policies and measures, which have been particularly detrimental for women.

Banerjee and Mitter point out that when ‘tradition’ is romanticized, workers are taught to regard each step in the process – whether ritualistic or actually productive – as an equally essential one and no explanations are provided why it needs to be done. This creates a mind-set which venerates the past and distrusts change, a form of conservatism that has particular implications for women’s skills because they, much more than men, are supposed to be the keepers and not the questioners, of social values in the context of the family.

The invocation of ‘tradition’ simply ignores how such an approach to knowledge makes it dif�cult to innovate or to question; it discourages original thought and the desire to go beyond the known. Moreover it freezes ‘tradition’ rather than recognizing that culture is always in process historically. For example lore and ‘know-how’ can be partially forgotten over the generations making even the understandings based on the accumulated experience of practising particular crafts garbled and inappropriate (see Banerjee and Mitter 1998).

BR ID G I NG T HE G A P

An unresolved tension in the project was how to build on existing experiential knowledge and engage with the new technologies which big transnational companies controlled and introduced. But this is after all one of the great dilemmas of ‘the third industrial revolution’ as the gap in knowledge and power continues to widen dramatically. The discussions held in the course of the UNU/INTECH project continually came back to this dif�cult question. Given that the proposition of returning to ‘tradition’ was of dubious benefit for many women, who had been subordinated in the past, and was anyway no longer practicable because of the surrounding changes brought by industrialization and the global penetration of capital, what alternative democratic strategies could be developed for a more human-centred transition? In the country-based workshop, ‘Making Women’s Voices Heard’ in New Delhi in 1995 for instance the participants debated how research and policies could identify ‘ . . . the existing skills of women which could be the basis for starting programmes of employment generation’(Gothoskar 1996: 3). Gouri Choudhury gave a concrete example – instead of teaching handloom weavers to operate the new looms non-weavers were being brought in and trained, thus a chance was being missed to use women’s tacit skills for alternative employment. (Gothoskar 1996: 3) A comparable case in Vietnam revealed how policies for social restructuring required resources, either from �rms or from private industry. Pham Thi Bon’s research revealed how education and training, coupled with child care, literacy programmes at the workplace, and �exible vocational training, could ease the

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dislocation experienced by women workers who were being laid off when new technology was introduced. (Bon 1996: 24) Investment in training alone could not be the answer, for it could focus on an elite alone.

L O CA L A N D GL O B A L

Despite the differences in the countries studied the need for the state to take responsibility for forms of social restructuring and welfare kept surfacing. This raised the political question of how current state policies might be changed and how the daunting task of democratising policy making at the national and international level could be approached. A UN project could not engage with particular states’ politics, but it could seek to help build and strengthen a bridge between state structures and NGOs.

The UNU/INTECH project was really calling attention to a process, which has been developing in an ad hoc way among some of the NGOs. For instance, the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India presents an interesting model of a women workers’ organization prepared to negotiate with the power- ful at the level of the state and international agencies, while persistently returning to the women at the grass roots’ de�nitions of their own interests and needs. SEWA, which combines mobilisation as a union with developmental projects and welfare services has played an important role in quite consciously moving between the micro and the macro.14

‘Monitoring the Impact of Technological Changes on Women’s Employment in the Asian Region’, thus had some footsteps to follow. Nonetheless making connections between representative and participatory forms of democracy is a complex and dif�cult process.15 ‘Bridging the gap’ between the NGOs and the states proved to be rather more complex than making a good rice cake. In the words of Cecilia Ng, ‘One of the stumbling blocks was that these two groups, for the most part, seldom met to discuss, nor did many see eye to eye with each other (Gothoskar 1996: 11).

Chandni Joshi, speaking on behalf of UNIFEM, at the country-based work- shop in Delhi in 1995, was more optimistic about the impact of women’s NGOs upon international bodies such as the UN. She referred to the UN meetings in Cairo, Copenhagen and Beijing in raising the visibility of women. There were also changes in approach, for example UNDP’s shift to an assessment of eco- nomic growth in qualitative rather than purely quantitative terms by including the Gender Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Matrix (GEM) (Gothoskar 1996: 2).

Like training, however, research cannot be effective in a vacuum: some means of getting it adopted in practice is required. By bringing activists and policy makers together in common forums internationally (Mitter and Ng 1995), the project revealed that, far from there being no longer scope for particular national states or for organizations working at the grassroots, there is actually even greater urgency for both kinds of social intervention.

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NEW F O RM S O F O RG A NI Z I NG

The UNU/INTECH project’s participatory approach raised an interesting set of issues about both NGOs and trade unions – the organizations which can act as intermediary pressure groups between the grassroots and policy making bodies nationally and internationally. The rise of the NGOs had coincided not only with the rolling back of the state but with a sustained offensive globally by employers against trade unions.

In her synthesis of the project, Geraldine Reardon (1998) notes that despite the tendency of trade unions to neglect women’s speci�c interests and the fact that many women work in non unionised Free Trade Zones or the informal sector, the weakening of trade unions has still left many women workers without vital defences. It is not simply the economic impact of casualized employment, job insecurity or unemployment, which have restricted trade unions in the Asian region. Many employees have been forced to work in circumstances of fear and physical intimidation because unions have either been banned or, conversely integrated by the state and used to carry out policies which serve the interests of the international companies rather than those of union members (Reardon 1998: 21–22).

Problems exist too in the internal structures, practices and attitudes of both the NGOs and the unions themselves. The term ‘NGO’ is very vague and covers organizations and groups which are very different. Some are large demo- cratically run structures, while others are tiny research groups, self help centres or community projects.’NGOs’ can be basically self-appointed, which raises problems about their relation to the communities they claim to represent. While some are rooted and embedded in local neighbourhoods, others might survive simply because they are adept at doing funding applications. NGOs thus can replicate in microcosm problems which have become evident in efforts to create participatory structures to transpose needs into policy at the level of national states. An unexpected spin off from the UNU/INTECH project was a rethinking of the future role of NGOs.

Unions are likely to be much older organizations than the NGOs. Well established and formally structured, they tend to have a built-in conservatism and resist the �exibility, which has characterized the NGOs. The 1990s saw growing pressure for trade unions not only to take up issues of women’s equality at work but also to change their organizing strategies. However, even in countries such as India, which has strong traditions of democracy and a history of independent trade unions, it has been a tremendous problem to get organiza- tions, which have been formed, in one historical context to adapt to new circumstances. Geraldine Reardon argues that the UNU/INTECH research reveals the need for unions to be ‘ . . . pro-active rather than re-active in matters of technological change’ (Reardon 1998: 23). There was a need for unions to ask how technology was going to be used, by whom and how it would affect other workers (Reardon 1998: 23).

Sujata Gothoskar provided a practical example of women workers taking a

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pro-active initiative in defence of their jobs at the 1995 country-led workshop in New Delhi. Women in a pharmaceutical �rm in India commissioned research on the impact of new technology upon their work and then used the �ndings to develop demands, which they presented to their trade union committee, management and the state (Gothoskar 1996: 22). She argued that basic information such as this could be relevant to women workers. On the basis of her own experience as a committed researcher she believed that obstacles often arose in the manner in which knowledge was transmitted and sometimes the questions asked by researchers were not appropriate ones. The other side of the coin was that it became clear in the course of the UNU/INTECH project that if wider connections were to be made, there was a need for some training at the grassroots in how to utilize information which was removed from direct experience.

The NGOs who contributed to ‘Monitoring the Impact of Technological Changes in Women’s Employment in the Asian Region’ had all gained experi- ence of this kind of transmission and training and thus constituted a valuable resource of action based knowledge in themselves.

Geraldine Reardon argues convincingly in her monograph for a comple- mentary relationship between NGOs and trade unions. ‘Women’s NGOs usually see women as whole beings, not just workers’ (Reardon 1998: 28). Because they have worked on issues such as women’s health or domestic violence they can bring experience and knowledge to social needs which the trade unions could take up. NGOs can provide services in terms of legal aid, training and retraining, and can undertake research, which can help workers to develop strategies. (Reardon 1998: 27). Because they are in touch with people in differing parts of the economy they can also bring together groups such as rank and �le workers, trade union leaders and activists in the informal sector or community groups. For example UBINIG, an NGO in Bangladesh, does this by operating through a Trade Union Development Education Centre (Sramabikash Kendra) (Reardon 1998: 28). The capacity of NGOs to contribute to the development of alternative strategies is enhanced by their capacity to bring knowledge of developments in a speci�c sector of industry or in other sectors. Geraldine Reardon shows how this can both involve and encourage workers who feel isolated, ‘ . . . to examine their own situation in a more objective light and lead to a greater understanding of their situation and their rights to learn how to articulate their employment needs’ (Reardon 1998: 29).

However NGOs themselves are still often isolated, under-resourced and cut off from vital sources of knowledge both nationally and internationally. (Mitter and Ng 1996: 34). So Geraldine Reardon suggests that while the NGOs have the advantage of grassroots engagement and �exibility, their fragile networks could be greatly strengthened in association with international bodies, sympathetic states and with the international structures of the trade union movement. An example of such an alliance working in practice is the ILO’s Convention and Recommendation on Homework in 1996 which has agreed on the social regu- lation of homeworkers’ conditions.16

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Despite the continuing resistance to change within many trade unions there are a few interesting signs of radical shifts in outlook. Examples include a pro-active response to technology, a wider de�nition of health and safety to include working environments and stress, as well as linking with activists in the informal sector, with consumer campaigns and community groups. Women’s groups in many countries have played an important part in pushing for a ‘new’ unionism, more evangelical in style and prepared to include social issues (Brecher and Costello 1990; Panitch and Swartz 1993; Gindin 1995; Tesselaar and Ooostveen 1997; David 1996; Milkman 2000). In fact these forms of unionism are not entirely new, but a rediscovery of earlier forms of trades unionism which had been forgotten during the post-war era.17 They are, however, responding to a completely changed context – the startling and unknown repercussions of global technological transformation, which have taken the ground from under the feet of all the groups concerned to develop more human centred forms of economic restructuring. It is evident that rethink- ing, reorientation and renewal are required in the established organizations and institutions, in combination with an expansion of the capacity and scope of the under-resourced groups at the grass roots.

CO NC L US I O N

‘Monitoring the Impact of Technological Changes in Women’s Employment in the Asian Region’ has made considerable headway in collecting data on the impact of globalization and technological change on women in Asia, in developing and connecting the knowledge stored in grassroots organizations while trying to bridge the gap between them and policy makers. It has shifted the debate about women’s employment and technology onto an examination of actual trends rather than a reiteration of ideological stances and brought a much wider range and greater depth of thinking to the question of democra- tising economic transformation. The UNU/INTECH project also served as a demonstration in practice of the right of economically excluded groups to a share in the resources controlled by international research institutions, which are usually directed towards those who possess assets in terms of formal academic knowledge, political power or wealth. It did, however, trigger off some early warning signs about the rapidity of change, the vulnerability of many groups of women workers and the dif�cult process of creating new kinds of institutions, which can assert and defend their needs.

Though necessarily only a beginning, it demonstrates that international institutions can respond to the claims of the excluded and become more accountable. There are signs of a new awareness at the grassroots about what is at stake. In Gouri Choudury’s words, the claim for the right to knowledge seeks ‘ . . . to make the process of development a transparent and democratic process by saying that people who are being “developed” have a right to know “what” this development is about and “how” they are being developed’ (Choudhury

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1996: 18). One aspect of this right to knowledge involves wider social access to information technologies. Another is the connected resolve to democratise the uneven and unequal manner in which economic policies are developed. Sumitra, Gouri Choudhury and Tara Negi testify to the transformative impact of engaging in such a dialogue in the UNU/INTECH New Delhi workshop,’ Standing at the crossroads to modernization and marginalization this workshop opened doors to new thinking (Action India 1995: 1). It is to be hoped that many feet will tread through the door that has been opened.

This article is based on ‘Monitoring the Impact of Technological Changes on Women’s Employment in the Asian Region’, a UNU/INTECH research project funded by UNIFEM and the Dutch Ministry of Development Cooperation. The project was co-ordinated by Swasti Mitter, in collaboration with Cecilia Ng Choon Sim and in its initial stages, also with Rohini Hensman. Sheila Rowbotham has worked for several years with Swasti Mitter on the concept of democratisation of knowledge and power, which has been the basis of the research underlying this project. The authors are grateful to the collaborative work done by all those who participated in the project and for help in editing this article to Jane Williams and Geraldine Reardon.

No t e s

1 See for example Bhagwati (1998), Hirst and Thompson (1996), Krugman (1997), Panitch (1994) and Radice (1999).

2 For examples which look at the social implications see George (1992), Rowbotham and Mitter (1994), Brecher and Costello (1994), Kofman and Youngs (1996), Marchand and Runyan (2000).

3 See UNCTAD (1994) 4 See for a critique Giddens (1997), Bhagwati, (1998). 5 Opposing perspectives can be found in Cooley (1987), Mitter and Rowbotham

(1995) and Kothari (1997). 6 See for example Shiva (1988), Merchant (1992). For a critique of some of the

implications of eco-feminism see Mitter (1994) and Mitter and Rowbotham (1995). 7 See for example Ng (1987) and Chhachhi and Pitten, (1996). 8 On the need to take an inclusive perspective in the context of the US see Amott

(1993). 9 See for example Hale (1996), Boris and Prugl (1996) Ross (1997).

10 This point is made in relation to software programming in Brazil by Gaio in Mitter and Rowbotham (1995: 226).

11 The term was the title of the book by Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, (1972) The Hidden Injuries of Class New York, Knopf.

12 On resistance to working conditions in Vietnam see also Green�eld (1998). 13 There is a vast literature but see Kirkup and Keller (1992) and Mitter and

Rowbotham (1995).

Swa s t i M i tt er a nd S he i la R owb ot ha m/Br i ngi ng Wome n’ s V oi ces i nto D ia lo gue 397

14 On SEWA ses Renana Jhabvala in Rowbotham and Mitter (1994) and Carr et al. (1996).

15. Breines (1982) looks at participatory democracy in the American New Left. MacIntosh and Wainwright (1987) describe the GLC experience in which the municipal state sought to link with trade unions and community groups. Wainwright (1994) examines the approach to knowledge and economic planning in radical social movements.A

16. Chandni Joshi makes this point in Gothoskar (1996: 2). On the role of NGOs see Carr, Chen, Jhabvala (1996) and in relation to Latin America, Alvarez, Dagnino and Escobar (1998).

17. See for example Milkman (ed.) (1985) and Schrom Dye (1980).

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