[asia-apec 109] Posting from DAWN (part 2 of 2)

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(con't)

affected by increases in the prices of commodities and inflation that
resulted from drastic fiscal and monetary policy shifts, when compared
to their rural counterparts. Moreover, the massive forcible eviction
of long-time urban pioneers have been ongoing in many places to pave
the way for factories and infrastructure facilities that are
constructed in support of free trade.

In defence of Southern women's interests

The complications and increased hardships brought about by
globalization on the lives and aspirations of poor Southern women and
their families and communities, make it difficult for anyone to see
real winners among them. If globalization is to work for the interest
of the poor, the question "who benefits?" cannot be left for states,
multilateral agencies and TNCs to answer. 

The agents of globalization will say women have been gainers because
the labor market that had been curved out of export growth have been
filled predominantly by women workers (flexible labor, migrant labor,
subcontracted labor). But what kind and conditions of work, we need
ask. Moreover, what real impact has this kind of work had on gender
relations and gender equity questions even just within the realm of
production - labor segmentation, wages, employment conditions?

The agents of globalization will, further, say that women, their
families and communities who had been displaced from traditional
productive work have been absorbed into other jobs or given support to
cultivate non-traditional export crops. They are, therefore, gainers.
But what we see are women being displaced not just from productive
work but from reproductive, life sustaining activities, as well. For
poor Southern women, there is a reproduction-production continuum in
their daily lives. Women work to produce and work some more to take
care of their families. What good would a few more cents a day do if
these are not even enough for basic needs that are now to be bought
because they could no longer be freely acquired from the privatised
surroundings?

The real voice of poor women and men - through the institutions of
civil society - will need to be heard and defended.  One way to do
this is to ensure that women's groups are able to participate in
advocacy and action around policy debates on trade and development, at
the international, regional and national levels. Very often women are
left out of public consultations mainly because civil society
institutions and processes are themselves traditionally controlled by
"compacts of male power". Moreover women's inability to participate in
substantive discussions around issues and perspective on
globalization, even on occasions they are invited to, reflect an
immediate need for enabling processes and information that would make
women better analyse the link between their micro realities and
globalization.

Globalization & poor women in East/South East Asia

Rural poor women in East/South East Asia have been impacted by
processes of globalization in a number of ways. Foremost among these
is the increased pressure on poor women to find new, often more
cumbersome, ways of negotiating for their family's entitlements. As
rural families are displaced by land conversions, environmental
resources are depleted in the name of profits, and traditional
livelihoods are destroyed and taken over by export-oriented production
- all of which aggravate problems associated with access and control
of resources for household maintenance - women's reproductive
functions are made more difficult. These new factors increase the
pressures and complicate conditions that have been generated by
persistent problems of low income, inadequate basic services, and
unchecked social prejudices against women, including the cultural
tolerance of domestic violence.

Poor rural women who have been eased out of agriculture have been
absorbed into "women specific/female prone work" a phenomenon that has
emerged out of NIE strategies of export competitiveness. This type of
work is characterised by low pay,  labor intensiveness, and reliance
on low skills & technological know-how. Assembly-line work and its
extension, namely, sub- contracted outwork, are two sectors whose
engines of production and profit have been fuelled by women's labor or
female prone work. Eviota (1995) speaks of the problem of Asian
women's de- skilling resulting from their concentration in low skill
production work. Added to this is the problem of vulnerability of
women's employment as seen in the disappearance of certain
export-oriented companies and their transfer to another NIE country
where labor and labor and wage policies are more favorable to
increased  to increased profit. Moreover, Eviota mentions the spread
of automation and the reliance of new technology on male work, the
combined impact of which is to ultimately make Asian women's work
redundant.

Globalization has encouraged the growth of labor migration between the
countries of East/South East Asia, and with this the emergence and
incrased importance of 'labor exproting' and labor importing'
economies. In Asia, the demand for highly skilled workers are met by
white male expatriates while that for manual workers, by Asian women
contract workers.

Intra-regional trading of women domestic workers, mainly coming from
the Philippines, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia has reached
significant proportion and now constitutes a big industry in the
region (APDC, 1988; 1994). Women migrant workers were found to engage
in repeat or serial migration, extending or obtaining new contracts
even before current contracts expire. While the costs of labor
migration are high for the migrants and their families -
discrimination, absence of adequate labor protection, illegal
recruitment, low wages, and vulnerability to physical and sexual
abuse, even death, - massive unemployment and underemployment in their
home economies push many more women to migrate every year.

The development of tourism, retail trade, airline/travel and the
entertainment industries in many countries of East/South East Asia is
linked to the demands of, and the opportunities opened up by,
globalization. Consumerism and travel for recreation purposes
characterise the lifestyle and value of capitalist accumulation and
competition. High and upper-middle class recipients of the benefits of
economic growth who have disposable incomes (North and South) visit
Asian countries to enjoy the 'world of the exotic and the enticing'.
Closely linked to these industries is a well established subterranean
enterprise of domestic prostitution and transnational trafficking in
Asian women. It is estimated that every year close to 1 million
children, mostly girls in Asia, are forced into prostitution (HDR
1996).

Just as the link between growth and improvement in human development
is never automatic, so is that between growth and gender development
and empowerment. The latest HRD (1996) revealed that certain high and
medium growth countries, in fact, posted low values in their gender
development indicators (GDI) and/or gender empowerment measures (GEM)
while countries that posted low GDP ratings earned high values in
their GDI and/or GEM. Singapore and Korea are examples of countries
where women's human development has been enhanced by growth but where
women continue to be 'politically and socially managed' by men.

Concluding remarks

The region of East/South East Asia contains in a nutshell all of the
intricacies, complexities and contradictions spawned by the process of
globalization - uneven growth, poverty amidst affluence, winners and
losers, accumulation and dislocations. The APEC, the leading mechanism
for free trade in the region, is itself a microcosm of the interplay
of dynamics between economically affluent countries and economically
disadvantaged economies; between Southern NICs, NIEs, and Economies in
Transition; and between states and TNCs. The "eye of the storm" in as
far as globalization is concerned, is definitely in the East/South
East Asian region.

In terms of women's development and empowerment, there are statistics
to show (for instance, HRD 1996) that economic growth per se does not
lead to greater gender equality and equity. And while Asian women's
employment had expanded as a result of job creation linked to trade
growth, more recent studies indicate that for some countries, such as
the Philippines, growth through a liberalised economy had not resulted
to more jobs (see, for instance, "1996 Mid-Year Economic Trends and
Assessment" by R. B. Guzman, July 1996). Fears about Asian women's
work eventually ending up as "redundant" in the face of advancement in
technology and adjustments in labor policies by TNCs, have been raised
(see, for instance, Eviota, 1995). When this happens (and it may
already be happening), a further increase in the volume of
intra-regional trading of documented and undocumented female labor
migration will probably follow. Quite bewildering is the fact that up
to this time of the Manila APEC Summit, member countries had
consistently refused to recognise the existence and contribution of
"migrant workers" in their growing economies. Instead, they are
preoccupied with concerns about "human resources development" for and
in the service of the demands of investments, production and trade.

Finally dramatic transformations are taking place at the level of
traditional habitats, ecosystems, communities, and families that
result from rapid economic restructuring and policy changes. Poor
Asian women who are nurturers of families and carers of community
needs, together with men, children and the youth, are being uprooted
and thrown into an existence of increased difficulties and new
uncertainties, all in a cataclysmic way.

Origin: A-team, Antipolo, Rizal (6:751/401.266)