The following articles were published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, March 7th, 2001. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au> Subscription rates on request. ****************************** Globalisation and women Globalisation is not a new phenomenon. However, the pace and content of what we currently refer to as globalisation has increased dramatically since the end of the last world war. by Jodie Coleman Unaccountable, unelected institutions such as the International Monetary fund (IMF), World Bank and World Trade Organisation (WTO) have emerged, with extremely widespread and detrimental effects on the overwhelming majority of the world's population. These effects tend to be more acutely felt by groups already facing material oppression such as women, children, indigenous people, ethnic minorities and the poor. Despite all this a wave of global rebellion has swept both industrialised and developing nations as evidenced by the Zapatistas in Mexico, and the massive protests in Seattle, Washington, Davos, Melbourne, Prague. If you think women in debt-ridden developing countries have enough on their plates with the crippling combination of poverty and patriarchy, it's worth looking at the activities of a couple of friendly organisations making things just so much worse. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) impose restrictions and conditions on their loans to developing countries. These conditions involve the governments of these countries making certain changes to their policies, including the way in which they allocate funding and resources. These restrictions adversely affect many aspects of people's lives in these countries, and disproportionately affect women. The IMF calls these policies "stabilisation programs" and the World Bank refers to theirs as Structural Adjustment Programs. (As these systems are largely similar I will refer to them both as SAPs throughout.) There are differences between these programs, but their shared goal is to reduce the role of the state and increase the role of the market. The basic purpose of SAPs is to increase the dependence of these countries and incorporate them more firmly into the world capitalist system. Structural Adjustment Programs aim to condition further lending to developing countries on a series of reforms, to increase economic growth and improve balance-of-payment difficulties. IMF stabilisation programs cut public expenditure of social services and food subsidies. World Bank SAPs emphasise incentives for private sector producers through changes in prices, tariffs, taxes, subsidies, and interest rates, and releasing resources for private sector use by reducing resources allocated to the public sector. It is important to understand the nature of the World Bank and IMF. These organisations aim to construct and support a world system where transnational corporations are free to move and trade capital without restrictions from national governments. Their policies are designed purely to protect the interests of these corporations. The process of adjustment affects households in a number of basic ways: 1) Changes in income, through changes in wages and levels of employment, product prices and product demand. 2) Changes in the price of essential purchases like food. 3) Changes in the allocation of public expenditure -- especially in regard to social or welfare policy, including the introduction or increase of user chargers for services like education and health. 4) Changes in working conditions through changes in hours of work, intensity of work, job security and fringe benefits -- this applies to unpaid as well as paid work. The vast majority of these changes affect people in a negative manner, and tend to most affect those who are already disadvantaged, like the unemployed, the poor, and women. There are several reasons why it is important to look at the gender-differentiated impact of Structural Adjustment Programs. SAPs advocate the removal of food subsidies as a means of reducing public expenditure. This, combined with rising food prices and frozen wage levels, leads to decreases in real income levels. When households reduce food consumption because of rising prices and falling incomes, evidence suggests that the females in the family receive less food than the males. UNICEF studies reveal a widespread deterioration in the nutrition of children and pregnant or lactating women in both urban and rural areas that are subject to IMF stabilisation and World Bank SAPs. Mothers are unable to buy enough of the right type of food to feed everyone in the family, and adult men are often given priority. As women generally bear the main responsibility for household management, it is women who must devise survival strategies when incomes fall and prices rise. These strategies include finding ways to stretch their husband's income or earning an extra income themselves in order to meet their children's needs. Maintaining a household on reduced resources takes more time and energy. All this extra work done by women, in and out of the home, is added to the huge burden of unpaid labour that they are already forced to take responsibility for. In this way we can see how the costs of Structural Adjustment Programs are shifted to the unpaid economy. It has been suggested by some that the opportunity for women to earn their own income will lessen their dependence on men, and reduce the level of oppression they experience. However, while women carry the double burden of paid and unpaid work they can never compete equally in the market, and are actually just forced to endure a longer working day. One major aspect of World Bank and IMF adjustment strategies is to encourage the introduction of Free Trade Zones (FTZs) or Export Processing Zones (EPZs) into developing countries. Basically these zones are areas where foreign companies (particularly manufacturing companies) set up operations with little or no restrictions on the transfer of profits out of the country. While they do provide jobs for local people, these jobs are badly paid, with terrible working conditions and little job security. Also, the nature of these operations is that all equipment, technology and skilled labour is imported and all profits and goods are exported. Thus, there is little interaction between these factories and the local economy and little benefit for local people. Supporters of Free Trade Zones (or Export Processing Zones) claim that they will create employment, increase foreign exchange earnings and thus ease balance of payments deficits, transfer technology and upgrade skills and therefore act as a catalyst to industrialisation. FTZs incorporate a series of incentives designed to encourage massive injections of foreign capital. These incentives include exemption from customs and import duties, low rental for factory buildings, government provided infrastructure and communications and subsidies for energy, investments and credit. However, the main incentive is the provision of cheap labour. One reason that the labour is so cheap is that companies are often exempted from complying with local <%4>minimum wage standards. Job insecurity is created because of the transient nature of the transnational corporations (TNCs) in these zones. They tend to shift operations from country to country following lower costs and higher profits. The experience of low wages and job insecurity is compounded by the hazardous working conditions often encountered by assembly line workers. Common complaints are head and back aches, kidney problems and chronic fatigue. These problems are all heightened by stringent quotas, night shift and forced overtime. It should be noted that the majority of workers in these factories are women. Women are unable to compete equally with men in the labour market because of their responsibilities to unpaid labour -- raising children, housekeeping and food preparation. Women also tend to have less political bargaining power. Thus, women are often forced to accept these terrible working conditions and low wages. In both industrialised and developing countries, women are relegated to the low-paid, low-skill, dead-end jobs, and are most susceptible to replacement by cheaper labour. When higher skills are called for, the jobs overwhelmingly go to men. The trend towards casualisation of work affects the jobs of women in urban areas, forcing many women into outworking at home. Women's jobs in the formal sector are also being made more "flexible", leading to a loss of job security, and fringe benefits like sick pay, pensions and maternity leave. The kind of work offered in Export Processing Zones is an example of this trend. It is clear that increased efficiency, of the kind valued by the IMF and World Bank, can be bought at the cost of deteriorating working conditions for women. Another disturbing aspect of Free Trade Zones is the erosion of workers' rights. A suitable climate for foreign investment is often complimented by authoritarian regimes that repress genuine workers' organisations in order to keep labour cheap. In these kinds of environments trade unions are often banned and strikes prohibited. Where unions are allowed they tend to be controlled by the company or manipulated by the government. This is perhaps one of the most destructive features of IMF and World Bank policy because not only are people ground down by poverty, they are denied a voice with which to protest. It is only through committed collective action that we will be able to stand up and defend our rights. "Lysistra", Women's Department, Macquarie University Students' Council. ******************************************************* -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
