Women's oppression in globalization - International Viewpoint. The existence of women’s oppression pre- dates not only globalization, but also capitalism itself. Moreover, due to its specific characteristics, the consequences that globalization exerts on it are not a foregone or one- sided conclusion. Psalms 12:5 KJV: For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the LORD; I will set Demonsaw was created to free us from the oppression of governments and corporations who are committed to destroying our privacy. They have no right to. Becoming An Ally: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression . This book, published in Europe and USA for the. Diversity, Oppression, and Social Functioning: Person-In-Environment Assessment and Intervention (3rd Edition) . Colon, Julia Hamilton Make Mine Freedom - Freedom to live how you want - worker, tycoon, kids in the malt shop versus communist ideology. People made to try communism. Globalization implies an unequal and different extension of capitalist production relations, in the north and the south alike. Today, women are at the heart of this process. To grasp its complexity, we must review the specific nature of gender oppression, and the particular means by which it interplays with the capitalist mode of production. Gender oppression cuts through all other forms of domination and exploitation in human societies. In particular, it extends beyond class conflicts, but it also cuts through all collective social realities - ethnic, national, religious, local. Moreover, it is closely tied up with the private sphere, individual and daily life, making awareness of its existence and the emergence of a collective emancipatory project particularly difficult. Finally, it is a socially constructed oppression, producing an ideological representation of differences often perceived as natural, and confined to the field of biology or psychology. Furthermore, although gender oppression did not emerge with private ownership of the means of production or capitalism, . Capitalism implies a growing separation of producers from the means of production, and a separation between the spheres of production of goods and reproduction of the labour force. This gave rise to what is known today as . By bringing about a forced march of capitalist production relations and the destabilization of former hierarchies, especially in the dominated countries, at a speed never before encountered, the capitalist mode of production never stops engendering itself. This is truer still if we take into account the sexual and social division of labour on which gender oppression is based. The capitalist means of production benefits from free reproduction of the labour force to increase the rate of surplus value. But at the same time, it has a vital need to have a reserve army of labour at its disposal, so it can extend wage work massively at any time, . So, we can make the following observations: because there is a sexual and social division of labour, the consequences of neoliberal globalization on men and women are not the same; simultaneously, neoliberal globalization cannot take the blame for all cases of heightened oppression of women in the contemporary world. Some of these have much more complex and often far older causes. Finally, due to its very nature, neoliberal globalization causes upheavals and destabilises prior social relationships and the traditional forms of domination. We must understand that these trends are aspects of the same contradictory and dialectical process. Liberalization and structural adjustment: increased inequalities. Oppression definition, the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner. The action of oppressing; arbitrary and cruel exercise of power: a system of oppression. The state of being oppressed. Liberal globalization - and the economic policies implementing it - are contributing to stepping up the super- exploitation and oppression of women, in most cases. Throughout the world, we are observing the feminization of poverty. In the North, women make up the majority of poor workers, underemployed and unable to survive on their wages. This situation, which has existed for a long time in the English- speaking countries, appeared several years ago in France with the extension of part- time work, most of which is done by women. Women also make up the bulk of unemployed workers, whatever their age and skill level. They are also the first group affected by structural adjustment strategies and economic liberalization, in many ways. They are affected since they bear the primary burden for reproducing the labour force. Measures partially socializing these tasks are under attack: elimination of day care centres in the Eastern bloc, privatization of schools and health care systems in the South, decline in quality and increased costs for all heretofore public systems, such as access to tap water, electricity, public transport, elimination of subsidies for basic needs. Women are the first to pay for these measures entailing harsher living conditions and a significant increase in the free labour they must perform. They also suffer the consequences of their subordinate position within the family: when education and medical care have to be paid for in the Third World, girls are taken out of school first, or first deprived of vaccinations. Women are also affected due to their specific place in the labour market: layoffs in the public sector, education, health, and the civil service, remove a lot of the jobs they held beforehand. Finally, they are disadvantaged due to the systematic discrimination they encounter in terms of farm production: access to land, credit and training. The decline in subsistence agriculture with respect to export crops is a catastrophe for women. They face threats in terms of food security, access to land (men leave women the least fertile land), a consequent increase in their workload both on the land to which they have usufruct rights and sometimes on their husband’s land, in particular in Sub- Saharan Africa. More generally, in all the rural regions of the Third World, their subordinate position in the social division of agricultural labour means that capitalist modernization of agriculture has worsened their situation, whether in terms of access to land or jobs, income, workload and control over the latter (Agarwal 1. Finally, the extension on the world scale of commodity relations reinforces the system of prostitution and other forms of human trafficking (new forms of slavery) of which women are, of course, the foremost victims. Contradictory changes. The contradictory nature of the relations between globalization and the oppression of women seem even clearer in Third World economies. Indeed, beyond the diversity of societies and situations, we can observe that the upheavals due to globalization have occurred following the development strategies that, from the 1. Training programmes and land reform only targeted . These changes also played a part in destabilizing social structures that were far from the . They had undergone in- depth changes due to colonization and were reconfigured by capitalism. Nevertheless, they called upon tradition to justify certain forms of persistent subjection of women in the family, the community and so on. Almost everywhere, we have observed an increase in the rate of women’s labour force participation over the last thirty years, even in Third World regions such as North Africa where it was traditionally low (Talahite 1. This growth in labour force participation, in wage work and the informal sector alike, generally follows direct foreign investment flows oriented towards export industries (Treillet 1. Many studies, in particular the study carried out by the Gedisst . Trade liberalization in different countries, in particular in Latin America, led to the bankruptcy of many industries protected beforehand by customs barriers and mostly employing men, while labour- intensive export industries had first hired women. The workers in these industries are subjected to all the worst aspects of super- exploitation: unhealthy and often hazardous working conditions, not counting sexist violence, harassment, and often interference with their private lives. We can also observe the contradictory effects of the extension of individual property rights to farmland; in Africa, and in Mexico with the reform of the Ejido . In effect, this development, of which we have seen the overall negative consequences described above, sometimes impinges on certain rights that had been granted to women by custom, but always subordinate to the whims of men or male community- based authorities. We find the same contradictory aspect in situations of economic and social crisis. A study of the consequences of the Asian crisis in 1. Philippines (Lim 2. But it also meant unemployment growing more rapidly among men than among women, due to the very segregation of the labour market in which women are over represented in the informal sector and in service and commercial jobs, less affected by the crisis. Sometimes, on the contrary, women’s jobs are the first to experience the consequences of reversal of growth. The garment industry in the Philippines was hard- hit by the WTO’s elimination of import quotas. In many cases, the development of export industries, in particular in electronics, led to the expulsion of women: production units became more capital and technology intensive, and began to prefer hiring men. Finally, at times transnational capital can benefit from tradition. This is what we have observed in recent years with the growth of subcontracting which develops work in the home, supposedly allowing women to simultaneously take charge of . This allows for a reconciliation of the capitalist order and the patriarchal order, with the latter given the responsibility of ensuring industrial discipline on behalf of the former. Potentialities for struggle. Despite all of this, the elements of instability brought about by globalization can contribute to a change in the status of women in the society, albeit to a limited extent. Many examples have shown that this is the case in Latin America when women are the only family members who can keep a paid job. In India, the expansion of footwear industries in a town in Tamil Nadu since the 1. Venou 1. 99. 9). But above all, the massive entry of women into the wage labour force, even if it is flexible and casualised, and more generally in paid economic activity outside the domestic space, opens up to them, in these very difficult economic conditions, the possibility to begin organising, to have their rights as women workers recognised.
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