Patrice Riemens on Fri, 24 Apr 1998 23:00:59 +0200 (MET DST) |
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<nettime> Christa Wichterich: A No Win-Win Game: On Women and Globalisation |
Christa Wichterich A NO WIN-WIN-GAME 1) The global run for comparative advantages has lead to a competition of sorts in dumping costs at the expense of the workers: salaries are cut, workers rights are curtailed, health- and environmental risks are ignored, flexibilisation and informalisation of labour increase. Women are used in the heated global competition like a natural and expandable resource because they are cheap, docile and flexible. Their discontinuous work biographies caused by pregnancies, births and child rearing comply with the flexible demands of the labour market. Women are pioneers in the new modes of labour, as temps, just-in-time- and homeworkers, as self-employed in the informal sector, small-scale entrepreneurs assisted by a micro-credit. They are the call girls of the global labour market, as workers on the global assembly line, as farmers who dig and weed on the global field, as migrants who subsidize the family back home in the village, as body trafficked from one part of the world to another. Yet the flexibilisation and informalisation of labour is now affecting men as well. 2) This global restructuring of labour markets means the end of security through paid labour. In future, lifelong and full-time employment will be an exception, just as the man as sole breadwinner. Discontinuous work biographies will be a standard feature and labour life will be like a tight rope walk with steep descents and new beginnings. Deregulation of labour markets makes for informal and flexible employment which does not yield enough income to secure a living, is usually unprotected by labour laws, and is not covered by social insurance. Reducing the production costs for employers and companies through casualisation, out- sourcing and homework means increasing the risk for the workers, curtailing their social and economic rights. The sweatshop- and out-sourcing economy make a comeback and change whole regions and countries into free trade zones. The increasing occurence of individual patchwork-economies, the expanding informal sector in all continents and the new social class of "working poor" are indicators for this trend. 3) Women are deemed to be the winners of globalised production, trade and services because more women are able to obtain employment. This so-called "feminisation of employment" and the integration of women into the worldmarket do not end discrimination and do not prevent poverty. More women become cash earners, but less reap security. The majority of women stay in the "pink ghetto" of typically female professions, on the lowest levels of the income- and prestige-hierarchy. Their chances of a professional career are limited, even in the sector of new technologies. And the group of winners is small: only a few women, young, highly qualified, dynamic, and mostly single, experience success stories and gain access to the domain of male achievement and decision making. The majority of women are only winners of low paid jobs and the masters of flexibilisation in a permanent twine between cash and care economy. 4) The global shopping mall is now open for business. Consumption is a kind of new global culture. And a mechanism through which the neo-liberal system coopts the new, highly consumerist middle class, but as well the women who work as just-in-time-tailors in a sweatshop. At the same time, the restructuring of the labour market polarizes societies and deepens the gap between haves and haves-not. The majority of women don't have the cash to purchase what the advertisement industry propagates as desirable in the new class system of ownership, where "brand name or no name" is the rule. 5) Parallel to the restructuring of the labour markets, states withdraw from their responsibilities for social security and redistribution of wealth. In the North this happens in the wake of the dismantling of the welfare state, in the former communist world after the collapse of the autoritarian socialist overprotecting regimes, and in the South as part and parcel of structural adjustment. Both, the state and the market externalise their social costs. Most of the social tasks are taken over by women, either individually in the household or collectively by women's groups in community work. Their unpaid work cushions social hardship. The rise of communitarism, the talk about the "third sector" and "citizen's work" as well as the praise of voluntary work by politicians actually echo the feminisation of social responsibility and props up the abandonment by the state of its social duties. 6) The flexible and informal modes of work make organisation of the labour force more difficult. The traditional male-dominated trade unions are unable or unwilling to cope either with the changes in the global markets or with the needs of women. Conventional modes of resistance have become ineffective. New global struggles and political instruments have to be explored as well as new international alliances as for instance between women's organisations, trade unions, human rights groups, consumer organisations, and NGOs lobbying f.ex. for the engendering of macroeconomics. 7) We are not running short of work but of paid work. What is needed therefore is a new social contract about the redistribution of paid and unpaid work and the gender division of labour. Preconditions are a reduction of working hours and mechanisms which either force or convince men to share unpaid work in the care economy. 8) States should not be allowed to disengage themselves from their social responsibilities and from their duty to regulate the market. The growing power of the TNCs and of the multilateral financial institutions has to be checked and curtailed. The global labour markets should be re-regulated by social and ecological clauses. For instance the global trade in commodities should bear eco-taxes in order to increase transport costs; a tax on speculative transactions (Tobin tax) should be imposed on the global financial market; and the downward trend in taxation of capital and property has to be reversed. 9) Neo-liberal globalisation creates insecurity and dependency. Social security will not come about ever by the market or the state alone. However, as people especially women develop local and regional systems of self-sufficiency and self-reliance in order to counter dependency from the global market, they may regain an autonomy which is need-oriented not profit-oriented, and which is based on solidarity, and not on competition. ................................... (Christa Wichterich is researcher and journalist based in Bonn, Germany. Her most recent book "Die Globalisierte Frau" (The Globalised Woman) has just been released by Rowolt. e-mail: <U.Hoering@bonn.gn.apc.org> --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl