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‘Nimble Fingers Make Cheap Workers’: An Analysis of Women's Employment in Third World Export Manufacturing
Abstract
The idea that women's subordinate position stems from a lack of job opportunities, and can be ended by the provision of sufficient job opportunities, is deeply rooted and held by a wide spectrum of opinion, from international development agencies, government bureaux and mainstream Marxists to many women's organizations. Our work in the Workshop on the Subordination of Women in the process of development at the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex University, has led us to reject this perspective as a starting point. We do not accept that the problem is one of women being left out of the development process. Rather, it is precisely the relations through which women are 'integrated' into the development process that need to be problematized and investigated. For such relations may well be part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. Our starting point, therefore, is the need to evaluate world market factories from the point of view of the new possibilities and the new problems which they raise for Third World women who work in them.
... This strand of literature emphasizes the need to pay attention to other contingent factors such as the type and nature of work, wages, and power structures at the workplace and at home. Malhotra, Schuler, and Boender argue that "without women's 27 Kabeer 1997;Pearson and Elson 1981. 26 Salway, Jesmin, and Rahman 2005. ...
Female workers have long been the face of the textile and garment manufacturing industry around the globe. They are considered as not only having naturally “nimble fingers,” but also being naturally more “docile and willing” to work in difficult situations. There is an underlying assumption that employment of women in the manufacturing industry will increase their job opportunities, enhance their access to and/or control over valuable resources, and empower them in decision-making. The development of the textile and garment manufacturing industry in Ethiopia has unquestionably opened employment opportunities for women constituting more than 80% of the labor force. By filling in an existing gap in research through addressing the workers’ self-perception of empowerment (referred to as mebkat in Amharic), this paper examines the emic views of how women perceive and experience empowerment. This is juxtaposed with an external definition of empowerment, as it is defined by the government and its international development partners, which presumes a positive correlation between employment and empowerment. Based on the case study of female factory workers in Hawassa Industrial Park in Southern Ethiopia and a closer analysis of research participants’ understanding of empowerment, this paper argues that Ethiopia’s budding manufacturing sector has not delivered on its promises.
Conjunctural moments offer opportunities for restructuring and reconstruction in existing systems of organization of people and economies. Already, in the context of the current polycrisis, the global economy is displaying highly volatile characteristics which may fundamentally reshape how business and employment will be reorganized. Foregrounding national labour law reforms in Sri Lanka, this paper explores the transformational role discourses and narratives play in crisis contexts to effect change. I argue that volatile moments reveal two significant drivers of change to labour regimes, which need further attention: (1) specific discourses and narratives emerging in the crises; and (2) existing socio-economic ideologies manipulated by emerging discourses and narratives to effect change. I demonstrate how paying attention to discourses and narratives in times of change offers particular and unique insights as to the pervasiveness and complexity of change, especially in times of crises.
The chapter provides a comprehensive theoretical and conceptual framework and the empirical perspectives essential to studying industrialisation and workforce development in Africa, underpinned by four perspectives. First, the historical development of industrial capitalism shows that countries that underwent industrialisation faced similar complex challenges in building an industrial workforce, providing the historical context and essential concepts. Second, a perspective on industrialisation, industrial policy, and cluster ecosystems provides the perspective needed to understand the process of industrial development involving government policies, sectoral ecosystems, and firm behaviours. Third, the conceptual framework of the rise of global value chains and the shifting nature of foreign direct investment are critical to understanding firm performance and how they respond to workforce development. Fourth, the labour control regime approaches that focus on labour relation regimes, workforce development challenges, and human resource management practices provide a critical dimension on firms and labour. In addition, the chapter presents a literature review related to the global trends and national context of the Ethiopian apparel and textile sector, providing empirical perspectives. This chapter highlights the importance of building an industrial workforce for late industrialisers, particularly those transitioning from an agrarian economy like Ethiopia. It highlights that diverse experiences show how industrial policies could direct and manage foreign direct investment (FDI) to play a critical role in workforce development. Experiences have suggested that having an abundant and cheap labour force is not enough for late industrialisation; a highly skilled and productive workforce is the key to successful industrialisation.
The women-led Workers’ Information Center (WIC) in Cambodia strives to create for women workers the spaces for empowerment, development, grievances, and for collective resistance in the garment sector. The Center operates as a “non-union” to avoid government intimidation and union busting while still generating collective power for their demands. It advocates not only for the rights of garment workers but also for equal access to public services for all Cambodian women. In order to do this, it works with other member organizations of the United Sisterhood Alliance in Cambodia.
India happens to be among one of the top emerging economies of the world
today. The contribution of the non-life insurance sector lies in providing a fillip
to the growth aspiration of the country. The vitality of the insurance sector for
a growing economy can best be gauged by ascertaining the profitability
performance. Using a panel dataset for a period from the year 2005 to 2020
and by employing the GMM model, the study finds that Expenses Ratio,
Reinsurance and Fixed Assets are significant variables impacting the Return on
Assets (ROA) of insurance companies. It is also found that GDP growth and
Inflation have significant impact on the ROA. The use of dynamic panel method
in this study makes unique contribution to insurance research in India.
Guestworker migration has become an increasingly prominent feature within the economic landscape of the Asia-Pacific. Longstanding regional disparities have underscored the emergence of fragile remittance economies where a structural reliance on labour-export has offered an unsustainable 'fix' for stubborn developmental challenges. Combining political-economic and Foucauldian frames of analysis, this Element reconciles the macroeconomic contradictions of remittance economies with the political logics bound up in emigration policymaking, contending that new modalities of governance have emerged in the transition from developmental to emigration states. Comparing the policy histories of four diverse remittance economies in the region – Myanmar, the Philippines, Samoa, and Sri Lanka – it frames emigration policies as complex, inward-facing interventions that simultaneously promote and constrain mobility to address counterpoised economic and political pressures. Important variations are explored though the example of gendered migration bans, whereby emigration states have situated women's bodies as sites for resolving contextually specific social tensions accompanying labour-export.
This paper was originally written for presentation at the Nuffield Conference on De-skilling and the Labour Process, in November 1979, and later discussed by the Conference of Socialist Economists Sex and Class Group. We should like to thank Sue Himmelweit for her comments on the first drafts and for her encouragement to rewrite it for Feminist Review: In revising it we have gradually come to realize that it opens up many more questions than it resolves. We put it forward, therefore, not as a finished 'position' but as a way of sharing our questions with other feminists, in the hope that a wider dialogue may ensue.
International subcontracting policies of developing countries are analyzed. The most important factors affecting demand are normally wage rates, political stability, and freight and distance costs, including bureaucratic barriers to trade and to setting up an industrial plant. Subcontracting probably can have a limited usefulness as a source of employment and foreign exchange and has economic and political effects on the developed countries. A possible definition of international subcountracting is: all export sales of articles that are ordered in advance where the giver of the order arranges the marketing. It can be divided in relation to the technical aspects of production, according to the type of firm giving the subcontract, or according to the business relationship between the principal and the subcontractor. The essential difference between international subcontracting and direct exportation is that the former avoids the problems of marketing. Although subcontracts given by producer firms have a different political impact from direct exports by developing countries, similar problems of structural economic adjustment are involved. 13 references.
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