Women Working Worldwide:
Taking on Global Capital
International Perspectives on Gender
Week 20
Structure of Lecture
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Introduction and Context
Why Female Labour?
Explaining Low Wages
Women Organising: Trade Unions
Consumer Power: Fair Trade
Ethical Trade and Codes of Conduct
Conclusions
Introduction and Context
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NIDL: clothing, textiles, electronics, agribusiness,
pharmaceuticals, customer services, care work
Not all production in UK is high-value added, high
capital intensity, high pay
Capital takes advantage of gender,
class and racial hierarchies
UK Homeworking
Men?
Why Female Labour?
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Demand for women workers
Perceived by employers as highly skilled, reliable, willing
and ‘docile’
This means higher productivity than men but less likely to
complain or organize for higher wages
Women’s skills and compliance assumed by employers to
be natural
Elson and Pearson: dexterity and docility are socially
produced
Women workers do
organise but face barriers
Explaining Women’s Poor Relative
Wages
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Higher productivity natural, not warranting reward
Skills ‘saturated by sex’
Women cost more in other benefits, it evens out
Women only need ‘pin money’, are ‘working for lipstick’
Women’s disadvantaged position in society is
systematically exploited by capital
But why do women work for low wages?
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- identify first with housework and childcare
- lack sense of entitlement, don’t push
- barriers to organising
Gendered Performance, Perception
and Exit
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Transnational Indian call centres: exceptions?
- Men and women as likely to be
employed
- No gender wage gap
- No perceived female or male skills
But gender is at work:
- performing femininity
- only women see work as
‘technical’
- marriage = exit for women
women
Impact of Women’s Employment
in Transnational Production
Pros
Financial independence
Improved self-esteem
Chance to organise
Greater decision-making
role in household
Cons
May give wage to family,
employment insecure
Poor wages
Poor working conditions,
health risks
Double-burden of work
Elson and Pearson: Impact contradictory
Women Organising
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1977: UN proclaimed 8 March day for
women’s rights and international peace:
International Women’s Day
Origins in 8 March 1857 protest by
female clothing and textile workers in
New York
8 March 1908 15,0000 women marched in New York
1909: March 8 celebrated as national women’s day
1911: First International Women’s Day
Women and Trade Unions
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Collective bargaining can be an effective way to improve
wages and working conditions
Strike by Turkish women pharmaceutical workers in won a
3-year collective agreement on pay and conditions
Challenges:
unions may be banned
union leaders may be harassed,
dismissed
‘sweetheart’ unions may be established
union agenda may not reflect priorities of
women workers
employers may threaten to move
production
Fair Trade
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From 3 products in 1994 to 3000+
Sales = £1.5 billion
Fair Trade Mark: guarantees:
- agreed minimum prices
- agreed social premium
- direct purchase
- co-operation, information
- long-term, transparent trading
- access to credit advances
- democratic organization of farmers / workers
- sustainable production
- no labour abuses
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Evolved from fair trade shops
Challenges for Fair Trade
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I’ve queried commodification of producers’ lives and
landscapes in brand creation:
- over-simplification and ‘othering’
- no ‘reverse gaze’
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Hutchens doubts fair trade empowers women producers:
- fair-trade standards include women but don’t
address structural barriers they face
- organisations are male dominated
- fair trade premiums may not ‘trickle-down’
- ‘charity’ model for handicrafts belies partnership
and limits competitiveness and market share
- gender inequalities seen as ‘cultural’ and ‘no-go’
Ethical Trade
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Codes of Conduct: typically guaranteeing living wages,
freedom of association and collective bargaining, safe
working conditions etc.
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Already covered by ILO Conventions but not enforced
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Consumer pressure works; puts
brand reputation at risk
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Forces companies to accept
responsibility down the
sub-contracting chains
Challenges for Ethical Trade
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Is monitoring and enforcement adequate?
Do workers know about the codes?
Is freedom of association and collective bargaining excluded?
Danger of ‘fairwashing’
‘Home-grown’ codes likely to be weaker
Can codes challenge ‘logic of capitalism’?
… ‘the retail companies at the top of the subcontracting chains
are themselves creating the conditions that operate against
attempts to implement their own codes of conduct’ (Hale and
Shaw, 2001, p. 521)
Do codes put some out of work?
Are they gender-sensitive?
Mis-recognition of workers
 ‘Home-grown’ FlorVerde code = good PR for Colombian cut
flower industry but inadequate labour rights
 Strategies of industry under pressure:
- denial: smears, work important alternative to cocaine
- rebuttal: work redeems ‘backward’ peasant producers
Misrecognition (Fraser): disrespectful stereotyping and
cultural domination used to ‘legitimate’ low wages
- limited acceptance: bring in FlorVerde (focus on
environmental not labour standards, self-certified)
- displace workers’ problems to patriarchal, conflictual
family (‘solution’ is conflict-management courses)
Conclusions
 NIDL targets female workers as highly productive, compliant
and willing to work for less than men
 Women’s lower status in society translates into a lower labour
market position (same for inequalities of class, ‘race’/ethnicity)
 Impact of employment on women’s status is contradictory
 Women workers are not docile; long history of organising but
face many barriers
 Consumer pressure can also raise wages and working
conditions via fair trade and ethical trade
 How involved are the workers themselves? How are they used
to sell the idea of fair trade?
 Are particular challenges for women taken into account?
 Danger of ‘fairwashing’
 Can’t expect economic justice without cultural justice