Pro- Globalization narratives hide "feminization of labor" to construct comparative advantage tropes

(Mary, Prof @ Rutgers, Policy discourse as sanctioned ignorance: theorizing the erasure of feminist knowledge Critical Policy Studies Vol. 3, Nos. 3–4, October–December 2009 )

Over the past two decades, more and more women across the global south have been recruited to the formal labor force, supplementing the work they do in the home and in the production of subsistence. Feminist scholars characterize this phenomenon as ‘the feminization of the labor force’. In export processing zones across the global south, for example, women constitute 70–90% of the factory workers producing textiles, leather goods, toys, electronic goods, and pharmaceuticals (Wichterich 2000). Export processing zones approximate a new form of ‘extra-territoriality’, existing within the borders of particular states, but exempt from taxes, tariffs, national labor laws, and environmental regulations. With official and unofficial bans against labor unions, working hours are long and working conditions are often hazardous. As transnational corporations have increasingly moved to ‘outsourcing’ labor, 200 million women are employed by subcontractors. In textile and pharmaceutical production, women employees work in their employers’ homes, garages, or workshops for very low wages. To meet production deadlines, mandatory overtime without compensation is often required. The tolls of such working conditions are manifold. Long hours at work impose strains upon family life as women workers have little time to perform the domestic chores expected of them. Some families find it difficult to withstand such strains. In Salvador, for example, 80% of the married women in textile production are living without their husbands (Wichterich 2000, Brooks 2007). Thus feminist scholars have pointed out that globalization is changing family formations: 52% of poor households are now headed by women, compared to 20% in the 1990s, and 10% in 1970s (Poster and Salime 2002, p. 211). The health effects of work in the export processing zones are also palpable. Women working in export processing zones have twice the normal rate of miscarriages and deliver twice as many underweight babies. Poor lighting, eye strain, and repetitive stress syndrome combine to impair the performance of women factory workers after a comparatively short period. The average work life for women factory workers in Thailand, for example, is five years. Job-induced problems with eye– hand coordination provide managers with a reason for firing workers. Nor is Thailand atypical. In Central America, the average woman factory worker is let go after seven years (Wichterich 2000). The ‘feminization of labor’ under globalization involves more than a shift to a majority female labor force. It also encompasses ‘informal’ and ‘flexible’ conditions of employment long associated with women workers, including part-time and temporary jobs, low wages, and no benefits. In 1975, 80% of economically active workers were eligible for unemployment compensation; in 1995 only 25% of economically active workers qualified for that benefit (Wichterich 2000). Both men and women workers have been subjected to ‘informalization’ and ‘flexibilization’ as the conditions of labor are ‘feminized’. The feminization of the labor force and feminization of the conditions of labor are also related to the kinds of work characteristic of globalization, in particular to the shift to a service economy. Although male-dominated services in finance and information technology can be highly remunerated, women-dominated services such as childcare, paraprofessional health care, retail sales, or cleaning services, tend to be paid very poorly. The vast majority of women service workers earn subsistence-level wages or less, which contributes to the feminization of poverty (Wichterich 2000). More than 70% of the poor globally are women. The economic restructuring involved in the transition to a market-based service economy has been particularly tough on women workers. In 1990, prior to the collapse of state socialism in Russia, women held 60% of the highly-skilled positions in fields such as medicine and chemistry. In the transition to a market economy, 80% of women workers lost their jobs. After a decade of severe economic dislocation, the job opportunities available for many women were far less attractive than the positions they had lost. Taking positions as hairdressers, cosmeticians, secretaries, and sex workers, many Russian women experienced a significant decline in wages. Before 1990, Russian women earned 70% of the average male wage; in 2000, they earned 40% of the average male wage (Wichterich 2000). The instensification of sex-segregation in the labor force under recent globalization has contributed to a growing wage gap between male and female workers. In Western nations women earn 10–25% less than average male earnings; in the global south, as in Russia and former Soviet states, women earn 30–60% less than the average male wage. (270-1)