International Perspectives on Gender
Lecture 19: Gender and Global Capitalism: World Market Factories
1. Introduction
Focus on gender and global capitalism
Key questions:
how it is that the world market factories are so feminized in terms of labour supply?
what does industrial employment mean for women workers?
how do women workers resist poor wages and working conditions?
Women workers predominate around the world in certain factory production (textiles, clothing, electronics); agribusiness (picking tea, growing strawberries, cultivating cut flowers) and now service sector work (help desks, mail order).
2. What is the old international division of labour?
A division whereby raw materials, cheap labour and secure markets flow from colonies to colonizer and capital and manufactured goods flow back the other way.
Colonies get monopsonistic terms for their raw materials.
Not a negotiated division of labour. Typically backed up by colonizer state power.
National capital carved up the world in the age of empire
Relatively small number of countries in north extracted ‘surplus value’ from majority of countries in South.
1901 - The United States Investor making the case for imperialism:
It is not necessary that the older civilised countries should build up manufacturing rivals in the undeveloped countries. They will undoubtedly do this to some extent but the logical path to be pursued is that of the development of the natural riches of the tropical countries. These countries are now peopled by races incapable on their own initiative of extracting its full riches from the own soil.... What is involved... (for the present) is not a revolution in the habits and capacities of the peoples of the tropics, but only their equipment with the best means of rendering their territory productive. This will be attained in some cases by the mere stimulus of government and direction by men of the temperate zones; but it will be attained also by the application of modern machinery and methods of culture to the agricultural and mineral resources of the undeveloped countries (cited in Hadjor, Kofi Buenor (1992) The Penguin Dictionary of Third World Terms, London: Penguin).
3. What is the new international division of labour?
Follow decolonization
a) Import Substitution Industrialisation (ISI)
Concentration by former colonies on the manufacture of goods previously imported, in order to reduce dependence on imports. Predominantly 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s.
Focus on heavy industry (mining, steel production, ship-building)
Forex and technological difficulties, also opposed by US as seen as socialist/communist.
Privileged male labour, excluding women: production shifted from cottage industry to factory
hard for women to combine productive and reproductive work
male labour preferred as better educated and seen as more suitable
b) Export Oriented Industrialisation (EOI)
Production for export. From late 1970s onwards. Relocation of multinationals.
First textiles and clothing, then electricals and electronics, then IT industries.
Backed up by US, IMF, World Bank. Minority world provides the capital, majority world the labour.
Incentives provided to multinationals: eg tax breaks, labour subsidies, freedom from labour legislation, easy repatriation of profits.
Free Trade Zones - a designated area, usually in or next to a port, to and from which unrestricted trade is allowed with rest of world
Export Processing Zones - a variant which provides buildings and services and other incentives for foreign firms such as freedom from labour laws, tax exemptions, labour subsidies
Countries which have industrialized through EOI are known as NICs - Newly Industrializing Countries.
Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan
Thailand, Malaysia, China, Brazil, Turkey, Mexico, South Africa, inter alia.
Burma, Vietnam, Bangladesh?
EOI is based on employment of women.
c) Clothing and the New International Division of Labour
The clothing industry spans the world. But what do we know about the ‘labour behind the label’ as consumers?
The story of a shirt (imaginary, but typical)
Designed in UK with aid of computer technology (male and female, skilled work)
Design e-mailed to contractor in Hong Kong
Contractor orders cloth from mainland China
Cloth is cut in Hong Kong (skilled generally male work)
Cloth sent to sub-contractor in Philippines where sewn (part factory, part home-work, female, unskilled)
Returned to UK where ironed, packed (female, often homeworking, unskilled work) and sent to retailer.
Combination of factory working and home-working, formal and informal.
Some of first NICs to industrialize have moved away from low-skill, low-technology production as they have developed, new countries emerging to take on these roles.
Coates Viyella: on an 80 year quest for cheap labour (retails as Jaeger clothing). Production shifted from UK to Hong Kong and now to Hungary, Poland and China.
Safa: ‘Runaway Shops’, footloose
Microsoft Xbox – all manufacturing in Hungary
Apple iPad – assembled in China: 7 day weeks; 16 hours a day; swollen legs; loss of use of hands; neurological damage; suicides; low wages (New York times, January 25 2012).
Questions for video:
1. What has industrialisation achieved in Malaysia? What problems has it brought?
2. How is industrial employment in Malaysia gendered?
3. How has incorporation into industrial work in Malaysia changed women’s lives? Has it
had a positive or a negative effect?
4. How is female labour disciplined in Malaysia and what strategies are used by companies to increase productivity?