February 26, 2007

PDF file: Outline:  http://www.igtn.org/pdfs//OUTLINE.ISGN.%20Asian%20Labor%20Conference.2007.pdf


Political and Ideological Premises

1. Capitalism is a gendered historical process that has been violent to women.

The successes of the propertied classes in gaining ascendancy in various societies, beginning in Europe, in which the ‘toiling masses’ were kept under the binds of exploitative economic exchanges, have been accompanied by the total subjugation of women (see Federici, 2006). This was carried out through processes of ‘fiery and bloodied’ separation of women from their traditional natural environment of labor exchanges and roles in the public sphere (traditional healers, mediators of conflicts, leaders) and their exclusions from new public institutions in emergent capitalist societies and in colonized societies. Women who persisted with such practices and who defied the new social constructions and norms were publicly shamed, socially censored even violently put to death (one million so-called witches were burned at stake throughout Europe). The material and cultural control and disciplining of women – our labor, bodies and sexualities - under the various patriarchies and masculinist commands of men, capitalists, church and state affected all women but were most severe on working class women who labored under extreme conditions of multiple exploitations and oppressions in the home, in the market, in their communities, and in the state. As a gendered process, capitalism where it spread and took root gave both working class and capitalist men the privilege of colonizing women’s bodies and sexualities. This is a part of the social constitution upon which the exploitation of labor by capital subsisted.

2. T he working class is a gendered historical subject.

The analytic and discursive representation of the Working Class in traditional and modern day Marxism predominantly reflects a ‘male’ subject and an industrial worker. The predominant image of the male working-man is one who is the sole income earner of the family with a set of dependents – his wife and children. The continual reproduction of such image has led to a suppression of the heterogeneity of working class subjects foremost of who are women who work in the informal sector but which also includes men who are found in non industrial jobs and occupations, in fact, of all who are found with different and complex work-life circumstances. For the longest time such totalizing representation has projected a limited imagination of exploitative economic relations between labor and capital as being of only one predominant kind (industrial setup) and of “work” as simply found in the market and in the formally organized side of production at that. For the longest time, this has also invisibilized a sexual division of labor in which men were in the paid part of the economy and women performed work in the unpaid or domestic part of the economy. And for the longest time, this analytic strategy has been inscribed in the unequal power relations between working class men and working class women. But globalization shifted the grounds of much of this (and this brings me to my third and last premise).

3. Globalization represents another cycle of primitive accumulation in which there is a recolonization
of the working classes and of women.

The processes and mechanisms of primitive accumulation quoting Amin (1974) 'do not belong only to the prehistory of capitalism; they are contemporary as well. It is these forms of primitive accumulation, modified but persistent, to the advantage of the centre, that form the domain of the theory of accumulation on a world scale' (Amin, p. 3). Globalization marks the era of a post-industrial society which is produced by the global integration of economic, political, and cultural structures. Driven by the North’s service/technical economy with its emphasis on information and finance management, capital accumulation necessitates that capital (represented by transnational corporations) re-structures its production and intensifies the international division of labor, for its efficient integration of new populations into its fold and its continuing exploitation but at the same time systematic reduction of labor in order to increase it productive power / control over surplus at a global scale. Thus the inter-linking phenomena of (1) global factory systems and value chains, (2) mobility and securitization of capital, (3) emergence of a feminized jobs throughout the south that are found in labor intensive manufacturing and services but at the same time, (4) the loss of male jobs from the break-up of Fordist types of production organizations, and (5) the rise in new forms of commodities in the form of finance, health, education, water, human organs, sex work, selling and smuggling of women, children and men. The global hyper-commodification of life in the current cycle of primitive accumulation has been accompanied by the simultaneous deepening of social domination through control of dissent and information, as well as, through the extension of the Empire’s coercive strategies toward regions / countries that refuse to be subordinated to the new social order, as well as the state’s intrusion into the civic sphere (Habermas).

Data on ASEAN Women in the Context of Globalization

4. From A Study of the Impact of Globalization and Market Integration on ASEAN (Francisco (ed) 2006), we can follow through the employment channel in globalization by presenting some labor and employment data: “Based on most recent information available, Indonesia and Thailand remain predominantly agricultural, which accounts for the highest concentration of female and male economic activity. Both countries show nearly equal percentage of female and male participation in agriculture. This observation is sharply in contrast with the figures in Malaysia and the Philippines where agriculture is dominated by male participation by as much as 7 and 20 percentage points, respectively. Except for Indonesia and Thailand, the rest of ASEAN show a remarkable shift to services. Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore indicate a concentration of female and male economic participation in services. However, employment in services is predominantly female by as high as 10 percentage points in Malaysia; 26 percentage points in the Philippines and 12 percentage points in Singapore. In terms of economic activity in industry, all ASEAN countries exhibit higher male participation. Among the ASEAN countries, Singapore has the highest gender disparity in employment in industry with 13 percentage points higher for male participation. Bias for male participation in industry is not as high in Indonesia with male-female disparity of 3 percentage points; Malaysia, 5 percentage points; Philippines, 6 percentage points; and Thailand, 3 percentage points. What is important is to examine beyond the gender differentials in employment per industry is the quality of employment. One indicator that may be used is wage differentials between women and men. Women’s wages in Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand are lower than that of men, or an average of about two-thirds that of men in the manufacturing sector. Only Myanmar registered higher women’s wages in the manufacturing sector. To analyze the full implications of wage differentials, it would be instructive to examine the magnitude of women workers in the manufacturing sector as a proportion of male workers. This is important to ascertain in view of the increasing ‘feminization’ in the manufacturing sector. Women’s wages are generally cheaper and females are deemed socially adapted to do tedious work more than men in manufacturing firms, particularly in the electronics sub-sector; hence the preference for female workers.” 5. “In general, the participation rate of females in the labor force is usually lower by half to twothirds that of males. It is interesting to note that compared with the rest of ASEAN countries, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Vietnam show higher participation rates for women in the labor force. About three in every four women ages 15-64 in Cambodia, Lao PDR and Vietnam join the labor force. This is very high in the region. However one has to examine where women workers are gaining in terms of employment and incomes. Studies in the Asian region have shown that these had tended to be from low-value added and labor-intensive sectors, such as, garments, electronics and horticulture (Durano and Francisco, 2006)”.

6. “The Philippines and Cambodia experience higher unemployment for females than males. It is interesting to note that despite more females completing tertiary education in the Philippines, they also experience greater likelihood of unemployment. This may mean that job creation is low and slow or that for every job created, either there is preference for males or that females crowd out each other. Cambodia, on the other hand, has a contrasting experience compared to the Philippines as it only produces one female in every four graduates, making tertiary education predominantly male.”

7. “Control over resources and productive assets help shape the degree of autonomy and the scope of economic, social and political participation of women. Productive assets such as land, capital, labor and technology remain predominantly within the control of men, which therefore deter women’s full participation in society. However, data is not available for “ownership” indicators, particularly on land ownership, access to capital and credit and access to technology and information. The following implications show challenges to gender equality: (a) Land is predominantly owned by males. Land-titling is usually under fathers’ and sons’ names, as they carry with them the cultural tradition of being bread-winners for the family. In the Philippines, land redistribution through the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program shows an insignificant number of women-beneficiaries. (b) Access to credit is also predominantly biased against women as they lack asset which formal financial institutions usually require as collateral. This situation pushes women to access informal arrangements, which are expensive and may even be exploitative. (c) Women’s access to technology and information may largely be an urban phenomenon. The location of women may also be a barrier to the opportunities afforded by technology and information.”

8. Household inequality: how is household work allocated?

“There is limited household-level information. But the gender dynamics at the household level reinforces the economic, social and political arrangements in the community and in society as a whole. The degree of empowerment at the household, or lack thereof, defines the scope for women’s advancement at all aspects of socio-economic life in society… In both Indonesian and Philippine data, women tend to spend more time working than men. However, women tend to spend more time doing unpaid, non-market activities than men…In urban Indonesia, 65 percent of women’s time is spent for non-market activities (i.e., household management and caring responsibilities) which take away time for them to participate in paid, market activities (i.e. production and employment). This is in sharp contrast with men spending only 14 percent of their time for household, non-market activities… The same pattern can be observed in the data for rural Philippines. About two-thirds of women’s time is spent for household matters, while men only devote 16 percent of their time for household responsibilities.”

9. To summarize the regional employment channel of globalization, according to the UNDP 2006 Trade on Human Terms: Transforming Trade on human Terms in the Asia and Pacific – “women’s unemployment rates have increased in recent years and are higher than men’s in most countries in the region” (p. 43)… There has been an overall decline in the capacity of the manufacturing sector to absorb people from the agricultural sector (capital has moved from low-tech to high-tech labor saving equipment; response to competitive environment and been shedding of labor) (p.46) … in India, there has been the emergence of large informal sector workers – of residual workers – which could not find work in agriculture and have left the rural areas (p. 45) and this has cushioned unemployment whereas in the Philippines it has been the phenomenon of overseas contract work.

10. In conclusion, we find today employment pressures for women much as there are employment pressures for men. Capital I its search for maximum profit is expected to further shed off workers in some localities, this time affecting not just men in the traditional areas of employment but also women in the so-called growth areas of the recent past. Women have come and gone into and from jobs from a position of inequality with men in relation to wages and work conditions and this is expected to be exploited by capital whenever it is necessary for profit maximization. Women are also entering and exiting all forms and types of paid employment burdened by housework and childcare. Unless working class men take up their share of domestic work, south women’s double exploitation of their labor will not cease to exist. At a more strategic level, the fight against capitalism and the creation of an alternative more humane economic and political system, in which autonomous producers engage in non-exploitative relations, have to be waged by the working classes in conjunction with other social movements. In so doing, the complex of hierarchies and inequalities in power relations, especially of gender systems, that are constitutive of and are constituted by capitalist relations will have to be simultaneously addressed and transformed. Nothing less is demanded.

 http://www.igtn.org/page/718/1