Globalization and its challenges for women in the south

                                  By Gita Sen, DAWN Research Coordinator

  Presented at the Women’s Roundtable Discussion on the Economic, Political and Socio-Cultural Impact of
  the South East Asian Financial Crisis, 12-14 April 1998, Philippines. Convened by DAWN-South East Asia
  and the GAD Program of the Asian and Pacific Develoment Centre.
 
 

  What I thought I would do is to reflect on globalization as the broader context of the regional financial crisis. I
  would like to take us to a discussion of what is new today in the ways in which the global economic system
  and its related political and cultural processes are in fact developing and growing. I would also like to
  identify where and how we could see the connections between globalization and what it means for us
  women in the South.

  Globalization is certainly not a simple term. It has many connotations attached to it. What we are doing in
  DAWN is to grapple with its many facets. When DAWN first began, we were focusing on some of its
  aspects. We certainly were not thinking the way we are thinking now. We came to realize that there are both
  ‘old’ and ‘new’ features in the current globalization process.

  The first is to look at what is happening in terms of global production systems. Clearly, global production
  systems are broadening and changing on the backs of two technological revolutions that have taken place
  for the last 30 to 40 years. One of these is the information revolution. The other one is the biotechnology
  revolution. The reason I think it is important to recognize these as revolutions is that they are not what we
  understand normally when economists or engineers talks about technological change. By which we mean
  some small kind of change which takes place in some sector of the economy or the production system.
  These are enormous changes that can completely alter and are still altering the way in which entire
  production systems with their multiplicity of variants and linkages is taking place.

  Everything from the global assembly line to the disappearance of the neighborhood tailor result from entirely
  new ways of producing that rely on the speed and efficiency of the communications processes that are
  linked to the information technology revolution. The other revolution which is much newer and whose
  ramification we still don’t know much about at this time and whose features are just beginning to emerge, is
  biotechnology. We still don’t know or understand a great deal of what this is going to imply in terms of the
  nature of the global production system. We think of biotechnology in terms of biodiversity, or intellectual
  property rights or what this would mean in terms of our resources in the South. But we don’t really
  understand what it means, for instance, if all chemical materials in production systems are going to be
  replaced by biological materials.

  A second major change is taking place in the services sector or such areas as banking, stock market,
  insurance, and communication. This is related, as well, to the technological revolutions that had impacted on
  production systems. Even 15 years ago when DAWN began thinking about the global economy and
  structural adjustment, trillions of dollars did not flow daily through computer systems across the world. The
  inter-linking of several service sectors in support of financial flows has major implications in terms of the
  ability of states and the global economic institutions to even manage what is going on.

  A third key aspect of globalization is the breaking down of barriers to trade and movement of capital.
  Clearly this has been done very consciously and systematically by some of the key global players such as
  the Bretton Woods Institutions. The imposition of structural adjustment programmes by the IMF and WB on
  debt-ridden countries effectively weakened national state capacity. Almost simultaneously or from the
  middle of the 1980’s the whole GATT-Uruguay Round Trade negotiations completely changed the features
  of international trade by creating the WTO and the new set of rules. We now have the attempt to create a
  new set of rules for international capital flows through the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). If we
  look at it in this way, we can clearly see a sort of a logical progression that is taking place in the attempt to
  globalize both production and service distribution systems.
 
 

                                    Women’s issues and gender concerns in globalization

  It is important to understand the nature of these linkages within globalization before we can speak about
  how it impacts on women and gender relations in the south. Clearly, gender is important along the whole
  range of our concerns with globalization.

  First, there is women’s labor and employment - the attention to the global assembly line and the fact that
  women are increasingly in the so-called services sector particularly in this region, as well as, in Latin
  America. I think it shows women have become central to current production systems. I think, there is no
  doubt that in very many parts of the South as well as the North, women are part of the labor force in a way
  that we were not before and the employment issues are key issues for us, right now.

  Related to this is women’s migration and the nature of migratory laws. Whereas previously international
  migration used to be largely male, migrants are now very heavily female in many regions, including SE Asia.
  And the kind of importance that has in terms of the kind of issues that we deal with is certainly obvious in
  this region.

  The third area we are concerned with is people’s livelihoods. What has been happening as a result of the
  increasing colonization of resources, is that rural women, particularly those who belong to communities
  used to managing resources on the basis of common property and indigenous knowledge of biodiversity,
  are increasingly being squeezed. Women are also found in the informal sector, itself changing as a result of
  either its integration within or marginalization by transnationalized production systems.

  The fourth area is the whole arena of social reproduction. Whether it concerns the availability of fuel or clean
  water in the face of globalized industrialization processes, or basic services such as health, education,
  childcare and maternal support, women are affected. These are culturally dictated women’s roles and
  responsibilities where gender and women’s position is absolutely critical.

  Still another area is trade. In this region in particular, the engine of trade was women’s labor. The engine of
  exports was female labor. From the very beginning this has been the case. And women’s labor continues to
  be absolutely central to the export-based model of industrialization for which this region in particular has
  become famous.

  Finally what has been happening because of globalization is that violence occurs at multiple levels, whether
  it is cross-national or ethnic conflicts where women are extremely vulnerable, or at national level with the rise
  of the fundamentalist tendencies and postures which turn inevitably against women. Or whether it is at the
  level of household and families where men increasingly turn violent in response to their own problems in
  income and livelihood and employment and also to the fact, that "their women" are no longer "their women".
  Their women are wandering off and earning incomes and supporting households and refusing to be "their
  women" anymore.
 
 

                                          Critiquing the politics of economic management

  After two world wars and a failed League of Nations that addressed only political issues, powerful states
  realized that they have got to deal with economics. This resulted to the creation of the Mashall Plan for the
  reconstruction of Europe, and with it the beginning of a whole new area of development cooperation. Global
  institutions were created whose aim was to ensure that the economic basis of the global system would, in
  fact, be solid for inter-capitalist competition and rivalry.

  And what are we now faced with, within the terms of our current approach to global management? How can
  the United Nations now manage this crazy financial system that is out of anybody’s control? How are they
  going to manage the environmental problem? How do we deal with the fact, that increasingly the
  polarisation and tremendous inequality in the world is creating larger and larger groups of marginalized
  people who simply do not participate and cannot participate anywhere within this process at all and are
  increasingly being thrown of the system? The powers that be of the global system at one level know that
  somewhere all these have to be addressed. This is one set of concerns.

  A second set is the nation state. At the level of the nation state, we could see a transformation in the nature
  of the debate. The mainstream ideological debate has increasingly gone from "capitalist versus socialist" to
  "state versus market". There is an entirely different ideological debate and that is: "What should the state be
  doing besides being an efficient market-supporter and ensuring growth takes place?" There seems to have
  been a shift in the mainstream debate away from the questions of alternative paradigms to working within
  market - based efficiency paradigms. How much are states willing to humanize the market? How much
  human development can we in fact afford within this process? What is it that states ought to be doing in
  order to ensure that people’s basic needs are met?

  Obviously, there are other dramas in these debates that are very interesting. For instance, every now and
  then, you find nation states and governments who are making claims for autonomy. Mahathir and Suharto
  are a prime example for this. Are they really re-opening the debate that goes back to the old state versus
  market debate? By no means! Neither Mahathir nor Suharto are against the growth of the economy. Neither
  of them is against what this is meant or continues to mean in the region in terms of state institutions and
  policies. And to still extend one can ask the question, is it clearly over the division of spoils that the
  argument is? Is it clearly over who it is that is gaining locally versus who it is that is gaining globally from the
  way in which the system has gone?
 
 

                                           Current challenges for the women’s movement

  Worldwide women are living in a period of crisis in global capacity to manage or to mitigate problems that
  globalization has generated. Women in the south are, also, having to contend with governments that
  continue to define development strategies along the lines of "globalization brought home."

  For civil society, the challenge is how do organizations and institutions that have grown out of community
  grassroots level work and participation, operate at a level that has to encompass increasingly national,
  regional and global dimensions – all at the same time?

  This has real serious implications in terms of capacity. For women’s organizations, in particular, I believe
  this is a very major issue.

  We have shown increasingly over the last 20 to 25 years our ability to take local experience and bring them
  to the national level. And to take our national experiences and bring them to the global level. But we have not
  yet built enough capacity to do the reverse, that is translate our understanding and analysis of what is
  happening at the global and the regional levels into what that might mean in terms of our own local
  community-based work.
 
 

                                                  DAWN’s continuing work on globalization

  DAWN’s Research Theme on the Political Economy of Globalization began in the mid-80’s when we
  initiated a series of researches into the food, energy and debt crises. We went from there to an analysis of
  structural adjustment as national level policies but which were being imprinted in country after country like a
  blueprint model across the world. This began our analysis and continuing of structural adjustment programs
  prescribed by the Bretton Woods Institutions. This led us to the realization that structural adjustment
  programs were but the tip of the iceberg. The deeper process was globalization, with all of its aspects and
  modalities. The round of analysis that we did on globalization culminated in the DAWN booklet entitled
  "Markers on the way" that was produced for Beijing.

  In the last year, DAWN has slowly moved into the area of capacity building, in the form of training,
  something we have never before done in a serious way. Some of us have conducted training workshops on
  globalization in India, South Africa and Cambodia. While we cannot convert the women’s movement into
  economists overnight, we can at least, deepen people’s capacity in this area.

  We continue to network with both mainstream and progressive non-women development organizations in
  this area. Groups that carry out important work on globalization are likely run by colleagues who are weak
  on gender analysis so that we want to be able to work with them. Finally we are in the process of information
  exchange with other women’s organizations that are able to obtain information on globalization very fast.
  Whether it is on the WTO, MAI, or women in development, some networks are the first people to know
  what’s going on. So, we have information exchanges with them. This can help ensure that we are not left out
  of the loop because we are based in the South.
 
 

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