Women’s Role in Shaping the Global Economic Landscape

Part I: Women’s Agency

The first part of this book examines women’s agency from a global-macro-regional standpoint and whether gendered action within workspace, families and communities is an outcome of women’s agency and is thus critically examined. Seven essays evaluate various grassroots campaigns in this part that turned into international campaigns especially with the International Labour Organization (ILO) in India, China, Bolivia, Brazil, Turkey and the USA. In these essays, we understand that a deepening of gender disparities came along with a deepening global recession and variations in the national policies of various countries reflected differing patterns of women’s agency.

The challenges of women for whom homes are the workplace and the struggle of these women to make that a part of the ILO’s agenda and recognise it as work is depicted in the case study of SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association) in the western state of Gujarat in India as discussed by Eileen Boris. The women from the lower end of the labour market organised themselves and demanded that a broader definition of labour under ILO should include home labourers. They also asked that invisibility of women’s work be brought to the forefront as also issues of social protection and ‘fair globalisation and decent work’. We get a glimpse of post-recession China which witnessed how capitalist development subjected women and impacted gender equality. The essay by Xiaodan Zhang evaluates women’s agency within the context of a market-driven economy controlled by the state. It expounds on how although women have moved to urban areas in search of better lives, their social and reproductive roles continue to subjugate them to extremes—the injustice of paying for their brother’s education, their own marriage/dowry and so on. The state’s promotion of value of family further reduces the rising status of an economically valued woman; what is also stark for these women is the belief that domestic life will provide more meaning and they will be looked after better in their old age; unfortunately this does not ring true.

In her essay, ‘Peasant Women’s Agency in Bolivia’ Anne Marie Ejdesgaard Jeppesen points out that although there was a low level of integration in the Bolivian economy with the global market, women’s rights and political participation have been enhanced after the 2008 economic crisis. The Bolivian peasant women’s organisation, Bartolina, has been instrumental in successfully influencing the government towards women’s participation in all spheres. This essay clearly depicts how the members of Bartolina have been able to take the opportunity through the intersection of gender, class and ethnicity to shape their identity and demand for improved socio-economic position of peasant women in Bolivia. On the other hand, Katiuscia Moreno Galera and Joao Paulo Candia Veiga have compiled an interesting research in the context of Sao Paulo in Brazil where poor Bolivian women immigrants have undertaken entrepreneurial endeavour in spite of several challenges. This study offers unique insights in light of the fact that apparel manufacturing saw an overhaul in Brazil and the contribution of Bolivian women was different when compared with the earlier essay on the peasant women’s Bartolina movement of Bolivia. Women’s experience of agency in both these cases differ from being in home country and enjoying citizen’s rights vis-a-vis negotiation that they had to do in Brazil for both their reproductive and wage working conditions. Apart from challenging and exploitive work conditions, the birth of a child, divorce, marriage, currency devaluation all add to emotional and physical contingencies.

The European Employment Strategy (EES) of European Union (EU) has been critically analysed by Gabriella Berloffa, Eleonora Matteazi and Paola Villa in the next essay with a focus on gender equality. Over the years, EES has been reformulated several times and the authors argue that the centrality of gender equality has been progressively lost being sidelined to parallel initiatives. They further point out how there has been a marked difference in the gender equality understanding in the labour market from a feminist social justice point of view and the EES approach of efficiency. They point out how the Great Recessions, instead of being an opportunity to integrate gender equality, became a threat to such priorities. While women’s removal of the veil in Turkey after it became a Republic was symbolic of a modern working woman carrying out higher skilled jobs, Esra Sarioglu discusses in her essay the gendered implication of the transformation of women’s employment trends in face of expansion of consumer consumption and new emerging employment opportunities for women. In this study, focussed on low-waged interactive service workers, she speaks on the concept of aesthetic labour based on the notion of ‘habitus’ elaborated by Pierre Bourdieu. It brings out the exploitation based on habitus that women face in spite of the opportunities that have opened up in modern Turkey. The woman worker’s self-presentation and interactive competencies become the indicators of her habits and subject her to the vagaries of the labour market.

Brigid O’Farrell in her study explores two occupational categories within the global economic framework, first of women workers who suffer hardships and harassment and the other of actions that are being taken up in the post-recession recovery to empower women in the USA. Although women make up for half of the workforce and also makeup for nearly half of the members of labour movements, problems still persist at the level of sex segregation, pay gap and decline of union membership. The author points out the importance of legislations and legal strategies along with respect for manual and care giving work; she argues that appropriate policies that enable women and men of all colours are the need of the hour in an emerging global economy.

Part II: Exploitation Versus Opportunity

Although prospects of work expanded, along with that new forms of exploitations emerged and opportunities contracted due to the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Through six essays from Mexico, Russia, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Countries, Kenya, Iran and Egypt, multiple experiences of women who are affected by the global recession are reflected in this part. Carol Nechemias in her essay on Russia speaks about the forging of the Russian orthodox church and the Putin regime that has significantly seen pressure on women to produce a second child and that is highly incentivised along with conservative family values. This therefore calls for women to place a high priority on family values. On the other hand, she argues that although women are not barred from taking up any position of employment, the policies themselves are discriminatory and reduce women’s workforce participation. It is interesting to note that the younger women however want to grab opportunities that do not adhere to the political propaganda of traditional values presented by the Putin regime. The situation of women who are involved in Paid Domestic Work (PDW) in Mexico is highly gendered and a detailed analysis of the situation in the post-2008 recession is provided by Georgina Rojas-Garcia and Monica Patricia Toledo Gonzalez. While women have access to PDW, they along with street vendors are highly vulnerable with instability, low pay and lack of any social security. While the authors analyse Mexico’s situation of the workforce in detail, the impact of gender disparity specifically with regard to low-wage payment and other socio-economic vulnerability for seeking healthcare or even quality education is evident. The authors suggest unionising as a way to demand rights on the one hand and better policies for workers on the other for the defence of women workers’ labour rights.

Kenya meanwhile has seen an enhanced employment of women workers with the establishment of the Athi River Export Processing Zone (EPZ) funded by the World Bank. Kelly Pike through her study with these workers discusses how these women are not bereft of any other benefits at the level of social reproductive labour. Although modern industrial economy has been slow in Kenya, with an increase in paid work for women, the author argues that opportunity and exploitation cannot exist without the other. In spite of the changing dynamics of women who earn a salary or wage through EPZ, exploitation, both on the work front and on the personal front also exists. The good news is women are willing to fight for a change in this situation and have begun. Similarly, in Egypt, gender segmentation in the labour market has pushed women to a limited number of occupation compared with men: Heba Nassar writes in her essay on the impact of trade liberalisation on women of Egypt. The author argues that to improve the situation of women, both a bottom-up and top-down approach is required, the former to increase participation and support by the government to women’s organisation, trade unions and so on and the latter by formulation of policies to reduce discrimination against women in labour markets. She further states while women have to be trained and educated to meet new technological challenges, international cooperation is needed to reduce gender-based inequalities and discrimination at the workplace.

Alessandra L. Gonzalez discusses that throughout the GCC countries the transition from rural areas to urban centres for higher education is becoming common for women; however, employment opportunities might not match accordingly. Through her study she raises questions on how GCC economies are resistant to qualified females taking part in the labour force and whether this is related to political and sociological factors that perpetuate persistent gender inequality. It is clear that the stagnant labour force participation rate in GCC does not fare well for more and more women with increasing university graduation. Similarly, Valentine M. Moghadam in her essay shows the role of the neopatriarchal Islamic State in the Republic of Iran that depicts increased enrolment of women in higher education and also their disconnect in the employment status. She traces the evolution of ‘Islamic feminism’ up until when women were a part of the Parliament and eventually women surpassing male enrolments in higher education. In spite of that the unemployment rate of women, especially young women, has always been astonishingly high. One significant finding for this disparity was the preference of male workforce by the state-owned hydrocarbon, manufacturing and finance sectors. Apart from that some deterrents are the Islamic Republic’s Sharia-based Civil Code, like Article 1117, which allows the husband to prevent his wife from being employed.

Part III: Negotiation of Social and Reproductive Labour

This part of the book has consolidated the other two parts that look at examining women’s agency and managing opportunities and exploitations while negotiating and renegotiating their gendered work. Unpaid work, such as mothering, childcare, care of the elderly, being emotionally present for the family members and so on, comprise social and reproductive labour. Essays from India, the USA, Hungary, Ireland and Sweden weave together this theme. Meena Gopal points out to women’s agency, especially young women in India, in making a choice to move away from homes to centres of production in view of the changing workplace scenario. She compares this with the life of women who carry out home-based beedi work and also carry out childcare and other reproductive labour. While the younger women who work in the factories are not directly involved with such reproductive labour, their earnings are understood to be the funds accumulated for their marriage and dowry and upon return to their homes they go back to beedi rolling. She points out how this beedi work ultimately dictates gender inequity despite small changes in the labour markets.

In a case study on Latino women in Chicago, Ivis Garcia and Maura I. Toro-Morn write about the impact of the economic recession of 2008 on this working class community of women. Feminisation of labour and Puerto Rican gendered and contradictory policies have seen massive movement of Puerto Ricans to New York and eventually to Chicago where working-class women along with balancing work and family had to deal with transnational emotional labour. The authors argue that having made a home and living in Chicago proved disastrous in the face of structural changes such as the global recession. However the active organising of women of colour through rallies and campaigns is on the rise to improve work-life chances of women, especially women of colour.

While we see women balancing full-time work with social and reproductive labour in the other essays, Erika Kispeter’s study focusses on the impact of the financial crisis on the part-time work of a group of mothers in Hungary. In the face of the economic crisis, it is interesting to understand how these mothers made a choice to explore part-time work or work from home as a work-care reconciliation and motherhood ideologies. She argues that since these mothers lived in developed areas of Hungary, they had more access to childcare facilities and therefore made certain choices, and in the face of the financial crisis these women made shifts in their ideologies and work-care decisions. Ursula Barry explores the impact on the austerity policies for gender equality as a consequence of the economic crisis in Ireland in particular and the EU in general. She points out how the ENEGE 2013 report explicitly states the negative impact on gender equality that the austerity measures had and women’s unpaid work became a substitute for the lowered household expenditure during the crisis and Barry’s research corroborates this finding. Involuntary rise in part-time employment was also seen due to the crisis across EU and gender equality was systematically deprioritised during the crisis and rise in poverty level and social exclusion of certain groups is the evident fallout.

While Sweden’s number one ranking of gender equality fell to number four, Anita Nyberg discusses whether this is a U-turn due to changes in policy especially in three areas—individual taxations, publicly funded childcare and parental leave/working hours. She argues that these three factors have contributed to kick-starting gender equality in the Swedish labour market, however with the increasing employment gap and change in policy for father’s role in care taking a U-turn is experienced during the 2010s in Sweden. It is however unclear how this affects working mothers in carrying out ideological motherhood roles.

This collection of essays is an enriching tapestry of the lives of women workers, mostly from lower economic strata that reminds us of the intricate negotiations women carryout on an everyday basis. The wake of the great recession also shook the world with the Rana Plaza collapse that took the lives of nearly 1,100 helpless workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh. As the editors point out that although the Rana Plaza tragedy symbolises the failure of globalisation, women across the world also hold on to their collective struggles. Action on the streets, on shop floors, in worker’s conventions enable them to engage in making the situation of women workforce better across the world through organising, negotiating and collective bargaining for safer working conditions, better wages, dignity and recognition of social and reproductive labour. This collection depicts the reality of women workers across time and space for enhanced gender equality in the labour market along with dignity and gender equality within the family.

The diversity of the contributors and the geographical context of the volume enrich the readers’ understanding of the world of women’s work from a global neoliberalism and transnational perspective. Although some essays might have taken the impact of the global recession head-on, some others have laid out the national and regional context preceding the crisis. The effects of this global economic downturn on women’s workforce participation can be understood in different regional contexts across the globe where women’s agency, negotiation and opportunity that come with exploitation from not just the workplace but also the family are vivid. A change in the nature of work for women due to the global economic recession and shifting macro-economic has seen women working hard to sustain what has been achieved in the past through collective action and throughout the volume this challenge is made evident by the authors.

The global recession has impacted women across the world and this is evident from each essay that has emerged from well-researched sub-themes in 16 countries: for researchers and activists alike, this volume contributes substantially to enrich one’s understanding of the world of women’s work.