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Sub-theme: Gender

Panel: The underbelly of globalization: Gender and economic integration in South Asia

• The Gender and Globalization Interface in South Asia
• Feminise without Unionise: The Indian Garment Sector and its Lack of Class Solidarity
• Globalization and Empowerment of Women in India: A Case of IT Sector
• Export Orientation of the Economy and Women’s Empowerment: Empirical Evidence from India

The Gender and Globalization Interface in South Asia
Karin Astrid Siegmann*

The human face of trade and investment flows is often hidden behind economic statistics and legal formulations. This human face is gendered. Globalization has meant different things for women and men.

Despite the recognition of gender equality, little progress has been made in achieving this goal, particularly in South Asia. Varying between 15 and 20 percentage points, the gender gap in education remains significant in most South Asian countries. The region is characterised by the second lowest female labor force participation rate worldwide after the Middle East and North Africa. Resultantly, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan rank 99th to 107th on the gender development index (GDI) and thus at the bottom of the distribution.

This paper tries to answer the question if and how global economic integration has influenced and interacted with these gender imbalances in South Asia. It presents theoretical approaches and empirical evidence regarding the globalisation-gender interface. Case studies based on secondary literature as well as findings from statistical analysis throw light on the South Asian experience with the interface between gender and globalisation.

Preliminary results point at a replacement of women’s work where more capital-intensive techniques were introduced in agriculture, such as through the “Green revolution”. Conversely, where labor-intensive primary sub-sectors were stimulated through globalization, for instance in cotton-picking and shrimp farming, women were recruited on a preferential basis.

A similar pattern can be noted in the manufacturing sector. New avenues for women’s employment have opened in light, read labor-intensive, manufacturing across the region, in particular in the textiles and clothing sector. It is endangered, however, from a future move towards more capital-intensive production that is likely to crowd out a largely unskilled female workforce.

The picture emerging from the services sector is patchier. Whereas for instance the tourism industry in Nepal and Sri Lanka allowed women’s economic empowerment through paid alternatives to involvement in agriculture, most South Asian women are barred from economic opportunities abroad.

These factors provide entry points for action. Overall, one can say that economic globalization creates economic opportunities for those endowed with productive resources such as human, and physical capital, access to formal employment and geographical mobility. In order to benefit from such opportunities, women and girls’ access to resources need to be strengthened. They include rights to land, access to capital and technology, support for unconstrained mobility – and first of all equal access to education.

* Dr. Karin Astrid Siegmann is a Junior Research Fellow at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad. She holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Bonn, Germany. Her specialization is in gender and globalization.

Feminise without Unionise: The Indian Garment Sector and its Lack of Class Solidarity
Alessandra Mezzadri*

The garment industry has been the platform for industrial development for many Asian countries, and it has a crucial role in South Asian economic growth. Garment production has always been linked with the feminisation of labour. Feminisation has been often based on appalling labour conditions, and has been mainly inspired by the possibility to exploit gender wage differentials. For countries such as South Korea, such differentials have even represented a proper instrument of macro-economic policy (Seguino, 2000).
However, in some cases, the feminisation of labour has also been a platform towards female empowerment; a tool through which women had the possibility to enhance their and their children’s living conditions (Kabeer, 2000). As women could finally leave the isolation of their homes and gather under a common roof in the factory, the working day often represented an arena for the creation of class solidarity. However, the study of recent trends in the Indian garment sector is quite discouraging; as it shows how today the formation of class solidarity is purposefully suffocated by producers’ strategies for labour control. With reference to two of the new growing Indian garment export centres, Chennai and Bangalore, the paper will explore these strategies, and it will show how they succeeded in preventing the formation of a conscious and cohesive working class in Indian garment production. Moreover, the paper highlights how producers’ politics of production pushes female workers themselves to participate in the reproduction of the conditions which prevent the formation of class consciousness. This is definitely the case in Chennai; here, the recent change in the dominant social profile of the Indian “perfect” garment worker, who has passed from being an older, married woman, to be a young, unmarried girl, has determined a decrease in female workers’ solidarity, eroding the basis for the formation of class consciousness. Older workers do not feel that they share any common goal with the “new entries”; in this climate, unions and labour movements struggle to find viable strategies to organise garment workers. The paper is based on the interviews and observations gathered during a period of extensive fieldwork carried ahead in India between October 2004 and July 2005.

* Alessandra Mezzadri is a PhD student and Teaching Assistant in Political Economy of Development at SOAS, London. Her academic interests focus on international trade, industrial development and labor markets in developing countries and gender and development.

Globalization and Empowerment of Women in India: A Case of IT Sector
V. Nirmala*

Integration of economies and societies under globalization in the South Asian countries has opened wider avenues for women's work participation, and thus their empowerment. In India, their work participation, particularly in the services sector, has risen since the 1990s due to increased trade and investments in the sector. The Information Technology (IT) sector has assumed great significance in this context. Women are increasingly found to be engaged in the sector, as a result of its increased exports. They are not only engaged in the production industries and as engineers, but are also engaged in BPOs of various types. This has increased their contributions to the GDP. Against this background, the proposed paper attempts to examine the trend and composition of women in the IT sector; examine the gender composition in the sector post-globalization; and to examine the benefits of their participation in the sector. Secondary sources of data are used for the study from 1995 to 2005. The study reveals that the proportion of women engaged in the IT and its related jobs are rising over the year after globalization. They are earning high salaries, even on par with their male counterparts, and supporting their families too. With globalization, given the prominence of India in the IT field, more women are also getting opportunities to work abroad. They are also commanding a respectable position not only in the family, but also in the society owing to their professional employment. Thus, globalization has improved the status of women in the IT sector in the country.

* Nirmala Velan is Professor of Economics at Pondicherry University, Kalapet, Pondicherry, India.

Export Orientation of the Economy and Women’s Empowerment: Empirical Evidence from India
Veena Jha* & Shahid Ahmed**

Integration of markets has resulted in an improvement in the economic and social status for a large number of women, but not for all. These include the millions of women workers newly absorbed into the global production system for whom wage employment has brought higher incomes, particularly in service sectors. The expansion of trade over the last forty years has brought about an increase in labor-intensive exports from developing countries. Employers in these industries have predominantly hired women, and the growth of exports such as textiles and clothing, shoes, jewelry, and electronics has almost always been accompanied by a significant increase in female wage employment in the formal sector. Increases in female wage employment have given women greater access to income, and have changed their position in society. The effects of global market integration vary in the North and the South. The most common view seems to be that while the employment consequences of increased trade are negative in the North, the South is likely to benefit from trade expansion. Even in the South, all regions have not been affected in the same way.

This study is an attempt to analyze the relationship between women empowerment and export share (ES) in state domestic product, the measure of export orientation of state domestic product. The study basically examines whether export oriented change in the production structure can bring changes in the socio-economic condition of women in India. This study shows that there is significant positive association between export share in state domestic product and the empowerment of women. The empowerment of women has been measured by a composite index consist of Demography, Education, Health, Drudgery, Social Status, Labor Participation, Economic Status and Leadership. The regression result indicates that higher the share of exports in the economy, higher is the empowerment of women. Higher export increases employment opportunities for women and hence their economic status improves which has subsequent positive effect on women’s other development dimensions. However, if you remove education and health from the gender development index, the effect of trade liberalization on gender development becomes insignificant, which indicates the crucial role of education and health in delivering holistic benefits from trade liberalization. The study also undertakes sector specific analysis to understand the sector specific gender sensitivities. Sector specific analysis concludes that employment opportunities have increased in export oriented sectors, especially for women workers. Average wages have improved. Sectoral analysis further indicates that integration into global markets does generate uncertainties for women but these may be outweighed by net economic gains and distributional effects. The macro indicators have demonstrated net welfare gains for women, but anecdotal evidence has also shown that global integration has had adverse consequences for women in several instances.

In view of these differences, UNCTAD under its “Project on Strategies and Preparedness for Trade and Globalization in India” has initiated an enquiry into “Impact of Trade and Globalization on Gender in India”. The focus is to conduct a study that will map and assess the relationship between gender and trade in India at the sectoral and regional levels. It is expected to make an overall assessment of women’s employment in India at sectoral and regional level and their role in the national economy. The study shall necessarily examine the following sectors: Agriculture and Food Processing; Textiles and Clothing (including handlooms); Handicrafts; Fisheries and other marine products. The study shall inter alia examine the following factors: Employment opportunities: opportunities to participate in the labour market in all sectors (horizontal distribution of activities) and all occupations (vertical distribution of activities in a profession); Wages; Working conditions and Quality of employment; Empowerment. Further, the study is expected to quantify the contribution of women to changes in productivity in sectors and regions that are integrated to trade. Some relevant suggestions will emerge, both broad and specific that could be used in National Trade Policy formulation to advance and protect the interests of women in gender intensive sectors in the international trade regime (eg. WTO, RTAs) by suggesting possible measures (eg.GSPs, Preferential FDI).

* Dr. Veena Jha is the coordinator of the UNCTAD/DFID/GOI initiative on “Strategies and Preparedness for trade and globalization in India”. She holds a PhD from the University of London and has taught and researched at the Universities of Oxford, London and New Delhi. She has worked with the United Nations for over 20 years, 15 of which have been with UNCTAD. She has served in an advisory capacity to several trade initiatives both governmental and non-governmental in several countries.

** Dr. Shahid Ahmed is presently working as Economist in United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), India Programme. He has nearly eleven years of teaching and research experience. His areas of interest lie in Econometric modeling, Issues in International trade, International Finance and WTO issues.