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Financial Crises and Social Reproduction: Asia, Argentina and Brazil
Abstract
“Anti-globalists see the ‘Washington consensus’ as a conspiracy to enrich bankers. They are not entirely wrong.”1
... Das hat eine "neue Welle des Kleinhackens von Beschäftigung in Teilzeit-, Leih-und prekäre Arbeit" und Lohnabbau und Entlassungen durch "Abspecken des öffentlichen Sektors" zur Folge. Frauen und ihre Care-Tätigkeiten werden "als soziale Air Bags gefragt sein, die mit Mehrarbeit (Aslanbeigui & Summerfield, 2000;Benería, 2003Benería, , 2008Klawatsch-Treitl, 2009;Thiessen, 2004;Wichterich, 2009;Young, 2003) im Haushalt Lohnkürzungen und Kündigung der Männer auffangen, mit zwei Mini-Jobs die eigene Entlassung ausgleichen, mit ehrenamtlicher Arbeit oder Selbsthilfe das Schrumpfen öffentlicher Leistungen abfedern" (Wichterich, 2009, S. 25). Auch Fraser (2016) legt dar, wie einerseits unbezahlte Care-Arbeit zur Kapitalakkumulation genutzt wird, während die Kapitalakkumulation gleichzeitig die Care-Arbeit unterminiert und so zu deren Krise führt (Fraser, 2016). ...
... Es gibt viele Untersuchungen zu früheren Wirtschaftskrisen, insbesondere zu Krisen und den Folgen, die durch Strukturanpassungsprogramme (SAPs) in Ländern des Südens auftraten (Aslanbeigui & Summerfield, 2000;Benería, 2008Benería, , 2003Young, 2003). Sie zeigen, dass vor allem Frauen als Erwerbstätige und Verantwortliche für die Familie, also als bezahlt und unbezahlt Sorgearbeit Leistende, besonders von der Krise betroffen sind. ...
Zusammenfassung
Im Kapitel 8 wird das Thema Sorgearbeit und die für ein klimafreundliches Leben notwendigen Strukturen vorgestellt. Versorgung und Fürsorge der eigenen Person, von Haushalt, Familie und Gesellschaft sind unverzichtbare, (über-)lebensnotwendige, aber oft unsichtbare Tätigkeiten. Die Relevanz dieser unbezahlten Sorgearbeit für ein klimafreundliches Leben hängt davon ab, in welchem Umfang Güter, Dienstleistungen und Mobilität für diese Tätigkeiten erforderlich sind und eingesetzt werden, wie emissionsintensiv diese bereitgestellt werden und wie viel Zeit dafür zur Verfügung steht.
... Insofar as the work on social reproduction seeks to draw attention to how everyday practices lie at the heart of global capitalism, it also seeks to understand how transformations in the organization and governance of capitalist economies have lived, embodied, gendered effects. Take for example feminist writing on the gendered impacts of the 1980s debt crisis in Latin America and elsewhere (Elson, 1994;Sen & Grown, 1987), the East Asian crisis of the late 1990s (Truong, 1999;Young, 2003), and the 2001 crisis in Argentina (Young, 2003; see also Hardy, 2016). A large body of work also considers the gendered underpinnings and effects of the 2008 global financial crisis (Gender & Development, 2010;Roberts, 2013;Young, Bakker, & Elson, 2011; for a complete overview, see Elson, 2013). ...
... Insofar as the work on social reproduction seeks to draw attention to how everyday practices lie at the heart of global capitalism, it also seeks to understand how transformations in the organization and governance of capitalist economies have lived, embodied, gendered effects. Take for example feminist writing on the gendered impacts of the 1980s debt crisis in Latin America and elsewhere (Elson, 1994;Sen & Grown, 1987), the East Asian crisis of the late 1990s (Truong, 1999;Young, 2003), and the 2001 crisis in Argentina (Young, 2003; see also Hardy, 2016). A large body of work also considers the gendered underpinnings and effects of the 2008 global financial crisis (Gender & Development, 2010;Roberts, 2013;Young, Bakker, & Elson, 2011; for a complete overview, see Elson, 2013). ...
... To be sure, this phenomenon is not isolated to the United Kingdom or the industrialized "West," nor is it historically unique. Rather, as feminist political economists have documented, this form of "moral hazard" has operated in the wake of earlier financial crises, including the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s (Elson, 1994;Sen & Grown, 1987), the East Asian crisis of the 1990s (Truong, 1999;Young, 2003) and the Argentinean crisis of 2001 (Hardy, 2016;Young, 2003). This earlier work emphasized the ways in which financial crises led to increases in the amount of unpaid labor done by families and communities, and especially by women (for an overview, see Elson, 2013). ...
... To be sure, this phenomenon is not isolated to the United Kingdom or the industrialized "West," nor is it historically unique. Rather, as feminist political economists have documented, this form of "moral hazard" has operated in the wake of earlier financial crises, including the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s (Elson, 1994;Sen & Grown, 1987), the East Asian crisis of the 1990s (Truong, 1999;Young, 2003) and the Argentinean crisis of 2001 (Hardy, 2016;Young, 2003). This earlier work emphasized the ways in which financial crises led to increases in the amount of unpaid labor done by families and communities, and especially by women (for an overview, see Elson, 2013). ...
The proliferation of homelessness and housing precariousness, along with a dramatic growth in food banks, are two signs that while parts of the UK economy may be recovering from the 2008 financial crisis and recession, the same cannot be said for the living conditions of much of the poor and working class population. Much of the media discussion has centered on the ways in which these social ills have been caused by government policy, particularly cuts to social and welfare services introduced under the banner of "austerity." I argue in this paper, however, that a narrow focus on austerity risks obscuring some of the longer-term structural transformations that have taken place under neoliberal capitalism, namely: (1) financialization and (2) the privatization of social reproduction. Situating these two trends within a longer history of capitalism, I argue, allows us to understand the contemporary housing and food crises as specific (and highly gendered) manifestations of a more fundamental contradiction between capital accumulation and progressive and sustainable forms of social reproduction. Doing so further helps to locate the dramatic proliferation of household debt, which has been supported by both processes, as both cause and consequence of the crisis in social reproduction faced by many UK households.
... During crisis in capitalism, the public/private divide and unpaid labour in social reproduction of private households is often reinforced, as one of several inequality dimensions of capitalism, in order to secure the capitalist mode of production. A range of well-known feminist economics and feminist political economy scholars has shown this especially for the Asian crisis and crises in Latin America in the past (Benería 1992;Elson 2010;Ferber and Nelson 2003;Walby 2009;Young 2003, among many others). ...
... Increased unpaid care work for women especially in times of financial and economic crisis, have been the result, as studies for the Argentinian, Asian and the Pacific crises show (Young 2003;Waring 2010). ...
... But as several authors have shown, there are gender impacts of economic crises which result from financial liberalization and increased volatility of short-term capital flows. The economic and social impacts of such financial instability have a greater effect on women than on men (Singh and Zammit 2000;Young 2003). Since many small and medium-sized enterprises are owned and operated by women, particularly in the informal sector, women could encounter greater difficulties in gaining access to credit. ...
... In response to budgetary austerity, countries appear to impose disproportionate reductions in the provision of economic and social services. Financial instabilities have led to dislocations affecting social reproduction and provisioning of basic human needs in Latin America and South East Asia (Young 2003). Cuts in education, health services, food and transport subsidies, sanitation facilities, water access services, and other care provision hurts most those "who are members of a subordinate class, gender or ethnic group, tend not to be fully owners of their own labour, but are subject to the control of patrons, landlords, chiefs, community 'bosses', village 'headmen', husbands, fathers, to whom they have obligations which are enforced, in last instance, by overt violence" (Elson 1997: 55). ...
The authors have convincingly shown the harmfulness for women of the WTO policies, be it the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), the Agreement on Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects (TRIMS). All these policies are formulated as gender-neutral, but are in fact gender-blind by design. There are several reasons for this gender-blindness: • A narrow understanding of the economy, which excludes the care economy and ignores the symbiotic relationship between production and reproduction, • Ignorance about existing gender inequalities in access to and control over resources like land, capital, and information, the gender- differences in the division of labour, and the unequal valuation of women's and men's labour, which are exacerbated through the neo- liberal free trade agenda, • Indifference towards poor people's well-being and the vital importance of food, water, and health, which are especially threatened by the WTO agreements. Those life-oriented basic needs are still women's domain given the care responsibilities and socialisation outcomes.
... The privatisation of social reproduction ties into globalisation and migrant care work, generating what has been designated as the new domestic world order (Handagneu-Sotelo 2002), the new international division of reproductive labour (Parreñas 2015) and the transnational economy of domestic labour (Young 2003). On one side, the reduction of social services in developed economies disproportionately hurts deprived communities, and more so women and immigrants (Peterson 2005). ...
The purpose of this paper is to observe how transformations across society, economy and politics, consequence of global capitalism, didn’t help to overcome gender inequality but, on the contrary, have added stratification to the inequalities between women. In order to do so, this essay offers first a general overview of the literature and concepts related to the position of women within the global political economy. Following that, the processes of feminisation of migration and the changes in the provision of care will be analysed including examples from the experiences of women in Spain in relation to Latin American migration. The research will conclude that while the role of the woman is not only carer anymore but also income provider, men’s workload has remained almost unchanged, as they have continued to fulfil their traditional role as [main] providers and keep playing a small – if any – part in the reproductive sphere. Institutions like global markets and governments have strongly contributed to the creation and permanence of the so called double – and sometimes triple – burden. Despite the socioeconomic progress that entering the formal labour force meant for women’s empowerment, the consequences of such phenomenon have been not only perverse but also unequal among women of different ethnic and socio- economic backgrounds.
... In den Mitgliedstaaten der EU gibt es, wenn auch in unterschiedlicher Ausprägung, Systeme sozialer Sicherung in Form von Sozialstaaten vor allem in den Ländern West-und Nordeuropas sowie einen vorhandenen öffentlichen Sektor. Aber auch in der EU gab es eine Verschiebung von unbezahlter Arbeit nach der Finanzkrise 2008 innerhalb von Privathaushalten zuungunsten von Frauen, wie bereits seit Finanzund Wirtschaftskrisen in Asien und Lateinamerika bekannt ist (Benería 1991;Herrera 2012;Horn 2009;Elias/Gunarwardena 2013;Elson 2012;Kantola/Lombardo 2017;Karramessini/Rubery 2014;Wöhl 2017;Young 2003). ...
The article discusses how unpaid social reproduction is related to paid (care) work since the latest financial and economic crisis 2008 and within the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. We discuss this in the context of austerity measures implemented in Spain, because they show particularly well how the effects of austerity policies have an impact on the social and health system, and how women are significantly more affected by unpaid social reproductive work during the Covid-19 pandemic in a more detailed case study on Austria.
... In den Mitgliedstaaten der EU gibt es, wenn auch in unterschiedlicher Ausprägung, Systeme sozialer Sicherung in Form von Sozialstaaten vor allem in den Ländern West-und Nordeuropas sowie einen vorhandenen öffentlichen Sektor. Aber auch in der EU gab es eine Verschiebung von unbezahlter Arbeit nach der Finanzkrise 2008 innerhalb von Privathaushalten zuungunsten von Frauen, wie bereits seit Finanzund Wirtschaftskrisen in Asien und Lateinamerika bekannt ist (Benería 1991;Herrera 2012;Horn 2009;Elias/Gunarwardena 2013;Elson 2012;Kantola/Lombardo 2017;Karramessini/Rubery 2014;Wöhl 2017;Young 2003). ...
In diesem Beitrag setzen wir die unbezahlte soziale Reproduktionsarbeit von Frauen in Privathaushalten ins Ver- hältnis zu bezahlter (Pflege-)Arbeit im Kontext der letzten Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise 2008 in Spanien und der jetzigen Covid-19-Pandemie in Österreich. Dadurch werden zwei Aspekte deutlich: Erstens, welche gravierenden Konsequenzen die Einsparungen im öffentlichen Sektor seit 2010 und neue EU-Vorgaben seitdem für die Sozial- und Gesundheitssysteme haben (Spanien); zweitens, dass besonders in Krisenzeiten einer globalen Pandemie die Mehr- fachbelastungen von Frauen in Privathaushalten in der sozialen Reproduktion deutlich zutage treten (Österreich).
... This is an extensive literature that I can only briefly allude to here. Van Staveren (2002), Young (2003), and Elson (2014) exemplify some of the work on the disproportionate gender effects of the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s and the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. Elson (2014: 191-192) describes how in Mexico and other Latin American countries, structural adjustment policies imposed by the IMF contracted the job market. ...
Review of feminist and gender studies literature on financialization.
... They have shown how financial and monetary policymaking has heightened gender-based and other forms of inequality (Elson & Çağatay 2000;Young 2018) and how global forms of financial regulation are gendered (Young et al. 2011). In research that spans the Third World Debt Crisis, the Asian Financial Crisis, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and more, feminists have shown how the causes and consequences of financial crises are gendered (Elson 2013;Hozić & True 2016;Seguino 2010;Truong 2000;Young 2003; for an overview, see Roberts and Elias 2018) and how the representation of crises takes on gendered forms (Brassett & Rethel 2015;De Goede 2009;Griffin 2013Griffin , 2015Sum 2013). ...
While the feminist literature on social reproduction is broad and diverse, one area that has remained relatively under-explored relates to the linkages between social reproduction and finance, particularly between social reproduction and household debt. In our contribution to this Special Issue, we seek to document and to analyse the structural linkages between social reproduction and debt, with a specific focus on pawnbroking in early modern England and contemporary Pakistan. We have four main aims in this article. Our first aim is to contribute to feminist theorizing about social reproduction by showing both how the daily and generational reproduction of households has relied upon historically specific forms of credit and how these social relations of credit/debt have been central to the development and reproduction of capitalism in different times and places. Second, we show how particular forms of ‘everyday finance’ are gendered and, specifically, how they are feminized. Our third aim is to elucidate the relationship between pawn loans, which have received almost no attention from feminist or other critical political economists, and the social reproduction of households in England and Pakistan. Fourth, we elucidate some of the gendered implications of the growing incursion of masculinized capitalist finance into new spaces of everyday life.
... SAPs have brought about further privatization and deregulation within states, while both implementing empowerment programmes for poorer women in the Global South and creating new dependencies through indebtedness, either to state or market intermediaries. Many of these gendered dynamics of restructuring are amplified during periods of crisis, such as the financial and economic crisis of the 1990s and 2008, which, as feminists have shown, lead to increases in women's unpaid labour in most regions of the world (Young 2003; see also Roberts and Elias in this volume). This occurs largely as the result of state retreat from social provisioning, as women often take over unpaid care work or otherwise carry the burden of social reproduction (Brodie 2003;Bakker and Silvey 2008;Bergeron 2011). ...
A rich literature on gender and the state in the international political economy has evolved in the last decades drawing on central assumptions of gender theory such as the critique of the public/private divide, gendered social reproduction and women’s participation and representation in local and/or global development. The feminist debates on state theory in the 1980s and 1990s focused if the state is patriarchal per se, or a set of institutions with space for the political agency of women. They paved the way for an on going debate in gender theory, questioning how and if the nation state can be - and still is - a promoter of women’s rights and agency (for earlier overviews see Randal and Waylen 1998, Rai 2004).
In this vein, feminists theorizing the Western nation state and its welfare arrangements have criticized its masculine oriented policies and norms, which lead to unequal gender orders and regimes (Hernes 1987, Connell 1990). But they also focused on the legal system as an opportunity structure for women (MacKinnon 1983), or, for example, analysed the discursive and structural power arrangements within state institutions themselves, manifested in state bureaucracies that hinder women’s advancement into powerful positions in organizations, state institutions or policy-making (Ferguson 1984, Cockburn 1991, Pringle and Watson 1992, Witz and Savage 1992). Others have focused explicitly how the state created class-biased and racialized dependencies of women through social welfare institutions (Fraser and Gordon 1994), how the gendered state is situated in International Relations (Peterson 1992), or how women’s representation is reflected in liberal democratic states (McBride Stetson and Mazur 1995). The question of “Third World women’s experiences” of the state were considered in comparative perspective (Livesley and Rai 1996, vii) and numerous empirical and theoretical studies on the postcolonial state questioned whether western feminist theorizing of the state adequately grasped the situation of women in countries with colonial legacies (Chhachhi 1991, Spivak 1987, Charrard 2001).
This brief overview of specific aspects of gendered state theory already shows that theorizing the state and state institutions has become a broad field of gender analysis pursued from manifold perspectives (Chappell and Waylen 2013). In International Political Economy (IPE), the tension between states, global and regional markets and international institutions such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund has been one main line of gendered analysis (Bakker and Gill 2003; Bedford and Rai 2010). The changing power relations within nation states, – through more informal business networks and executive branches gaining influence in processes of Global Governance – raise the question of whether women gain better access to institutions of Global Governance (Meyer and Prügl 1999, Rai and Waylen 2008). Do their capacities remain limited in governance institutions because already powerfully existing corporations and business networks reduce gender equality to investment strategies (Roberts 2015)? Similar to experiences Australian femocrats have made in national state bureaucracies from the 1980s onward (Eisenstein 1996), access to and decision-making in institutions of Global Governance remain ambivalent: While there is greater representation of women in different institutional settings, gender policies also have to be fostered and acknowledged by men in higher positions to make them effective. In all these cases, national state institutions still play a major role in negotiating women’s rights, fostering their advocacy and implementing gender equality measures such as gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting on the national and local level (Elson 2004).
In what follows, I will retrace in detail some of the abovementioned debates on the (Western) gendered nation state and discuss their role in shaping current debates on the state in the gendered international political economy. I then go on to discuss the changing role of the state within globalization from a gender perspective. In the final section, I will survey the debate on gender mainstreaming and the state more specifically to show the contradictory effects of strategies developed by the international women’s movement to tackle gender inequality.
... Women's labour, labour rights and the increasing burden of women in the context of privatization and marketization of social reproduction (Bakker and Gill 2003) is analysed in feminist development literature (Kabeer 1994;Elson 1995;Rai 2002;Beneria 2003). Finally the discrepancy between the state's role in regulating flows of capital and of labour (human beings) through a combination of nationalist, and even xenophobic, discourse around 'illegal' immigration as well through laws and policing have been studied by feminist sociologists and geographers (Sassen 1998;Young 2003; Kofman, this issue). ...
This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of global governance from a gendered perspective. It not only furthers the emerging feminist theorizing on global governance, but also provides a theoretically informed and empirically based analysis of both institutions and transformative practices. © Shirin M. Rai and Georgina Waylen 2008 and contributors 2008.
... During times of capitalist crisis, the public-private divide and accompanying unpaid labour in the social reproduction of private households is often reinforced, as one of several dimensions of inequality, in order to secure the capitalist mode of production. A range of well-known feminist economics and political economy scholars have shown this, especially regarding the Asian crisis in the late 1990s and numerous crises in Latin America (Benería, 1992;Elson, 2010;Ferber and Nelson, 2003;Waring and Sumeo, 2010;Young, 2003). Therefore, we argue that a research agenda that encompasses gender and other relations MAC of domination in order to improve our understanding of capitalist economies and societies, and their crises, is needed (see also Tilley in this volume). ...
In times of crisis, certain characteristics of the capitalist mode of production, social reproduction1 and the symbolic realm of societal formation become more clearly visible than would otherwise be the case. Capitalism’s inherent contradictions come to the fore and constructions of social norms that serve to reproduce the capitalist order may be rearranged or deepened. Additionally, ‘[o]nce a crisis strikes, inequalities are reinforced as the ability to respond to the shock differs between more powerful and weaker players’ (Fukuda-Parr et al., 2013, p. 15). This includes the power asymmetries between capital and labour, as well as inequalities of gender and ethnicity. In the post-2007 world of crisis, it is therefore even more surprising that theoretical approaches in Comparative Capitalisms (CC) research continue to exclude the social construction of gender, ethnicity and gender inequality. Even though gender is sometimes part of the analysis, broader questions of social reproduction, the hegemonic gender order of states and societies and their interplay with firm-centred decisions, are not related to one another.
... As has occurred in the wake of past crises, in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, there has been an abundance of Marxist IPE scholarship that seeks to explain the structural roots of capitalist crises, much of which has been tied to a critical politics that seeks to articulate possible futures beyond capitalism (Harvey 2010;McNally 2011;Albo, Gindin and Panitch 2010;Callinicos 2010;Gill 2011;Duménil and Lévy 2011). However, much of this work has failed to adequately theorize the gendered dimensions of finance and financial crises, despite several decades of feminist IPE scholarship that has drawn attention to the andocentric nature of finance (van Staveren 2001;Elson 2002;Young, Bakker and Elson 2011;De Goede 2005), documented the differential impacts of financial crises on men and women (Floro and Dymski 2000;Seguino 2009;Elson 2010) and outlined the ways in which financial crises render social reproduction increasingly insecure for much of the world's population (Young 2003;Gill and Roberts 2011). While some of these theorists are quite well-known for developing analytical frameworks that create a space for gender analysis (see for instance McNally 2002;Bakker and Gill 2003b), looking at Marxist IPE as a whole, gender seems to have faded even further into the background in the post-crisis moment. ...
This paper documents the rise of a politico-economic project of what I have termed ‘transnational business feminism’, focused on the need to promote women’s empowerment, particularly in the wake of the most recent global financial crisis. Here, liberal feminists have joined with states, funding institutions, NGOs and MNCs in constructing women as ‘untapped resources’ capable of delivering a high return on (Western) investment. This project has also generated new knowledges regarding both gender and finance, as the ‘excesses’ that led to the 2008 crisis have been linked to an errant masculinity that can be adjusted by incorporating women (and feminine values) into the finance realm. However, a feminist historical materialist reading of this project reveals that gender is used as part of a narrative that seeks to naturalize and depoliticize capitalist crises. Gender also becomes the basis for the re-embedding of capitalist relations that reproduce the exploitation of men and women while creating new markets and sources of profit for capital. While transnational business feminism is rooted in a particular version of Western liberal feminism that seeks empowerment via integration into the market economy, this paper argues that the contemporary moment offers an opportunity for a renewed emphasis on feminist scholarship that is firmly wedded to anti-capitalism, as well as a Marxism that takes gender seriously.
... A large body of literature has ensued demonstrating the ways in which the northern welfare state was premised on the model of the nuclear family and the male breadwinner. Within this model women were cast as dependents of both men and the state (see for example Brodie 1994Brodie , 1995Bakker and Gill 2003;Bakker 2003;Fudge and Cossman 2002;Young 2003). ...
Neoliberal dictates and structural adjustment policies have denuded African states and attempted to limit their role to enabling the building and functioning of markets. These policies have failed to promote development, exacerbated gender inequities, and deepened Africa's entanglement within exploitative imperialist economic relations. There is, therefore, a pressing need to re-establish a proactive, developmental role for the state in Africa. This article argues that in the current conjuncture such a project must be grounded in a radical reconceptualisation of both development and the state. Previous statist theories of development erred in casting development as a set of outcomes to be delivered by the state to a passive population. Due to their inattentiveness to gender they also reproduced and exacerbated exploitative gender relations. The article argues that in a context where it is difficult to even imagine an alternative to neoliberalism, development should be redefined as building collective capacity to envision, create and struggle for a society and economy free of gender, racial and class exploitation. The state must be reconfigured so that it is both strengthened by and helps to build collective capacity through processes of participatory democracy attentive to addressing and overcoming the mutually constituting structural inequalities of gender, race and class. Amidst the continent-wide retreat of the state from an active role in the development process, the post-apartheid South African policy of 'developmental local government' would seem to be grounded in just such a retheorization of the state and development. The policy establishes that the local government must promote development, redress apartheid inequalities and be participatory and gender sensitive. The article argues however that the South African approach is compromised by three fundamental weaknesses at the level of policy formulation. These pertain to the liberal conceptualisation of participation, the reduction of commitments to gender transformation to a focus on the participation of women, and the endorsement of a contracting vision for the local state which eliminates an active role for either the state or the citizenry in the development process. The article concludes by exploring more successful attempts at gender transformative, participatory approaches to governance and development in other parts of the world and reflecting on the challenges to pursuing them in the South African context. © Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, 2007.
... Sin embargo, un renovado y considerablemente fuerte interés en la obra de Marx puede observarse en todo el mundo, tanto entre las teóricas feministas como en otros autores. 4 "[El] resurgido interés por las conceptualizaciones feministas de la reproducción social" es un ejemplo importante y en la presente era de transformaciones globales, particularmente en la economía política, el trabajo del cuidado a nivel transnacional (trasnational care work) es un campo de investigación creciente en los análisis feministas interdisciplinarios (Bakker y Silvey, 2008: 2;Bakker y Gill, 2003;Young, 2003). Las obras de Teresa Ebert (1996) y de Rosemary Hennessy (2000) sobre el deseo, el trabajo y las identidades sexuales en el capitalismo tardío han postulado una importante demanda en cuanto a la urgencia por volver a vincular los análisis feministas de género y sexualidad con la teoría capitalista de Marx y los problemas del trabajo y la explotación en el mundo actual. ...
... Feminist scholars concerned with gender issues in global political economy, have revealed how neo-liberal structural reforms introduced in the 1980s has been guided by a body of knowledge built from androcentric, middle-class and 'productive-age' standpoints and has 'naturalised' specific activities central to quotidian issues of security -found for instance in caring relations within the social economy (Young, 2003), and in maintaining the balance in ecological relations. This has sidelined the value of such activities in national and global accounting systems, and excluded them from planning processes Elson, 2002). ...
Abstract Flexicurity –the labour market policy which combines flexibility and security concerns - has gained strategic significance as a ,policy instrument in the European Union since the mid-1990s, and is currently viewed as the most rational labour market policy for stimulating growth and employment under contemporary globalisation. It is the outcome of two important discourses that have informed the historical development of the European Union. The first is the level of social protection – including employment ,and job security – that had been instituted in the context of the ideology of the welfare state in the 1960s and 1970s. The second is the neo-liberal dominance in political and economic discourse in Europe since the 1990s, which has continuously promoted flexibility in the labour market as a means of increasing efficiency and productivity. The paper argues that the flexicurity discourse had been dominated by techno-
... Women's labour, labour rights and the increasing burden of women in the context of privatization and marketization of social reproduction (Bakker and Gill 2003) is analysed in feminist development literature (Kabeer 1994;Elson 1995;Rai 2002;Beneria 2003). Finally the discrepancy between the state's role in regulating flows of capital and of labour (human beings) through a combination of nationalist, and even xenophobic, discourse around 'illegal' immigration as well through laws and policing have been studied by feminist sociologists and geographers (Sassen 1998;Young 2003;Kofman, this issue). ...
... Of critical importance is the push for liberalization of fi nancial services, which is likely to have distributional consequences in both developed and developing countries. There is also a need for critical scrutiny of the gender dimensions of such negotiations (Kucera 2001, Young 2003. Likewise, the Bretton Woods Institutions have used a variety of mechanisms and instruments to reinforce trade and investment links and promote investment and capital market liberalization (Williams 2004). ...
... In particular, feminist researchers and women's advocacy organizations have highlighted the situation of poor women in developing countries marginalized by the exploitative labour practices of local and multinational companies, by the lack of governmental support for their economic participation and the lack of recognition for their unpaid care work in the family and community, especially during times of financial crisis. The gender analysis of women's advocacy networks has also revealed that many women are excluded from global markets because of a lack of access to education, capital, and business and professional networks (Keating 2004;Truong 2000;UN Inter-Agency Network 2004;Williams 2003;Young 2003). ...
Decisions that affect the life chances and wellbeing of citizens are increasingly being made in international settings that are only indirectly connected to the democratic institutions where those citizens have a voice. Global and regional governance organizations not only lack the democratic legitimacy of states but also there are few mechanisms that make them accountable to the citizens that their decision making most affects. Civil society groups have exposed this gap between the jurisdiction and the impact of supra-state organizations and have proposed various ways of addressing it. Feminist analysis has highlighted the masculine preserve of traditionally closed-door multilateral trade and security discussions and negotiations. It has also highlighted the unequal and deeply structural gender impact of this style of policy making. Women's movements have found international organizations to be especially challenging institutional settings within which to achieve policy influence. Yet transnational feminist networks have the political and ethical resources to make global governance organizations more accountable to a broader constituency. This article explores this phenomenon through an examination of the Women Leaders' Network (WLN) and its efforts to make Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation more accountable to women as political and economic actors. The WLN is the only women's transnational advocacy network to have directly and routinely engaged with an economic intergovernmental organization. An analysis of the limits and potentials of the WLN model highlights accountability issues for APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) and other regional or global governance organizations, as well as for the WLN and transnational civil society networks more generally.
... Of particular import is Lucas' attempt to bring together different levels of analyses (from the macro to the micro) in order to generate a more comprehensive and empirically grounded basis for understanding changing relations of production and social reproduction under conditions of globalization. However, in terms of theorizing the macroeconomics of globalization, this collection would have bene-fited from further engagement with the feminist political economy literature on neoliberalism and globalization (for example, regarding trade and finance) (Elson and Cagatay, 2000;van Staveren 2001;Bakker 2003;Cagatay 2003;Young 2003). The originality of this collection lies primarily in the diverse case studies from around the globe which offer contrasting views of the effects of globalization on women's lives. ...
... Women's labour, labour rights and the increasing burden of women in the context of privatization and marketization of social reproduction (Bakker and Gill 2003) is analysed in feminist development literature (Kabeer 1994;Elson 1995;Rai 2002;Beneria 2003). Finally the discrepancy between the state's role in regulating flows of capital and of labour (human beings) through a combination of nationalist, and even xenophobic, discourse around 'illegal' immigration as well through laws and policing have been studied by feminist sociologists and geographers (Sassen 1998;Young 2003; Kofman, this issue). ...
In this article I map out the major debates on global governance and the feminist critiques of the mainstream interventions in these debates. I argue that the shift from government to governance is a response to the needs of a gendered global capitalist economy and is shaped by struggles, both discursive and material, against the unfolding consequences of globalization. I suggest feminist interrogations of the concept, processes, practices and mechanisms of governance and the insights that develop from them should be centrally incorporated into critical revisionist and radical discourses of and against the concept of global governance. However, I also examine the challenges that the concept of global governance poses for feminist political practice, which are both of scholarship and of activism as feminists struggle to address the possibilities and politics of alternatives to the current regimes of governance. I conclude by suggesting that feminist political practice needs to focus on the politics of redistribution in the context of global governance.
Gender has always helped shape personal and family relationships, as well as governance processes, market structures, and religious practice. Political science, which is one of many academic disciplines in the world, is gendered and shaped by the social norms on sex and sexuality. This book aims to explain the gendered nature of political science and why it is important. It introduces the gender and politics scholarship, which is closely related to the practice of politics, particularly feminism, and discusses several key concepts, including some of the methods and methodologies that are currently available in the field. The book then shifts to a study of body politics, which involves the political importance of sexuality, reproduction, violence, and the body. From there, the focus turns to political economy, and the various forms and contexts of gendered organizing by men and women. The latter half of the book explores the relationship of gender to more traditional political institutions and the gendered nature of policy making, governance, and the state. Finally, the book addresses the arguments and puzzles surrounding equality, citizenship, multiculturalism, identity, security, and nations.
Care work is often feminised and invisible. Intangible components of care, such as emotional labour, are rarely recognised as economically valuable. Men engaging in care work can be stigmatised or simply made invisible for non-conformance to gender norms (Dworzanowski-Venter, 2008). Mburu et al (2014) and Chikovore et al (2016) have studied masculinity from an intersectional perspective, but male caregiving has not enjoyed sufficient intersectional focus. Intersectional analysis of male caregiving has the twin benefits of making ‘women’s work’ visible and finding ways to keep men involved in caring occupations. I foreground the class-gender intersection in this study of black male caregivers as emotional labourers involved in palliative care work in Gauteng (2005–2013). Informal AIDS care and specialist oncology nursing are contrasting cases of male care work presented in this article.
Findings suggest that caregiving men interviewed for this study act in gender-disruptive ways and face a stigmatising social backlash in post-colonial South Africa. Oncology nursing has a professional cachet denied to informal sector caregivers. This professional status acts as a class-based insulator against oppressive gender-based stigma, for oncology nursing more closely aligns to an idealised masculinity. The closer to a ‘respectable’ middle-class identity, or bourgeois civility, the better for these men, who idealise traditionally white male formal sector occupations. However, this insulating effect relies on a denial of emotional aspects of care by male cancer nurses and a lack of activism around breaking down gendered notions of care work. Forming a guild of informal sector AIDs caregivers could add much-needed professional recognition and provide an organisational base for gender norm disruption through activism. This may help to retain more men in informal sector caregiving roles and challenge the norms that are used to stigmatise male caregiving work in general.
One decade after the collapse of Lehman Brothers heralded the economic and financial crisis that would keep the world in suspense and provide the initial spark for a range of processes of economic restructuring, the project of European integration finds itself confronted with a variety of problems that impede the realization of policy cohesion on the European level. In this introductory chapter, the editors define a transdisciplinary framework for analysing the current crisis in its multidimensionality and present the different political, socioeconomic, and economic approaches employed therein. Combining the neo-Gramscian concept of hegemony with a heterodox economic approach, the chapter focuses on questions of policy coherence, democratic accountability and economic restructuring. The chapter provides an overview of the fault lines in European integration and retraces how areas of economic and democratic governance, financialization and militarization, the rise of the extreme right, as well as social exclusion, welfare and migration are facets of this process.
A collection of student essays from the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam.
This essay primarily argues that antipoverty programmes have long been a gendered arena and thus considers some of the assumptions about the 'poor' and about 'gender' and how it is used in an antipoverty programme. It has two main objectives: first, describe and analyse the discourse of poverty in antipoverty policy platforms from a gendered perspective; and second, apply this analysis to a poverty reduction project using a case study of a women loomweavers multipurpose cooperative in the Philippines. The case study links macroeconomic policy on poverty with a locally-implemented poverty reduction programme in the Philippines. It examines how the dominant discourse of poverty primarily based on conventional conceptions and the 'feminisation of poverty' thesis, selectively appropriating women's issues in certain development areas, has been acted out in different antipoverty policy platforms in the country, thereby reinforcing gender stereotypes at the local context.
This essay primarily argues that antipoverty programmes have long been a gendered arena and thus considers some of the assumptions about the 'poor' and about 'gender' and how it is used in an antipoverty programme. It has two main objectives: first, describe and analyse the discourse of poverty in antipoverty policy platforms from a gendered perspective; and second, apply this analysis to a poverty reduction project using a case study of a women loomweavers multipurpose cooperative in the Philippines. The case study links macroeconomic policy on poverty with a locally-implemented poverty reduction programme in the Philippines. It examines how the dominant discourse of poverty primarily based on conventional conceptions and the 'feminisation of poverty' thesis, selectively appropriating women's issues in certain development areas, has been acted out in different antipoverty policy platforms in the country, thereby reinforcing gender stereotypes at the local context.
The international migration of women within and from Latin America and throughout the world has grown considerably from the mid-20th century to the turn of the 21st century. In Latin America, the expansion of women migrants has been most concentrated in South America, specifically the Andes region, where poverty and demand for workers in a range of labor markets has expanded precipitously while gender and family roles have provided new opportunities for women to enter the workforce.
This article uses the United Kingdom as a case study to explore the limits of financialisation. It makes visible the increasingly intimate relationship between financialisation, indebtedness and social reproduction under the conditions of neoliberal austerity (Fraser 2014). It does so by unpacking how the everyday experiences of indebtedness materialise among individuals, households and communities. Specifically, we investigate debt’s significance within the household economy by analysing the everyday talk within ‘debt threads’ from leading Peerto- peer forums (Stanley 2014, Stanley et al., 2016). The evidence reveals how debt interferes with and disrupts the intimacies of life, and in doing so erodes its own moral economic claim as a priority obligation within the household economy. These are the limits of financialisation because if debts are not ‘cared for’ they are non-performing. And, non-performing loans – as it turns out – cause catastrophic failures in financialised global markets. This alone makes understanding the household economy relevant to why neoliberalism is failing.
Versteht man unter ökonomischer Globalisierung den zunehmenden Anteil grenzüberschreitend verlaufender Wirtschaftstätigkeiten privater Akteure in den Bereichen Handel, Finanzen, Dienstleistung und Arbeit an der gesamten globalen Wirtschaftsleistung (vgl. Schirm 2006), so entsteht die Frage, aufgrund welcher Kräfte sich wirtschaftliche Globalisierung entwickelt und vertieft. Die Antriebskräfte dieser zunehmend globalisierten Wirtschaftstätigkeit setzen sich aus verschiedenen Faktoren auf nationaler und internationaler oder transnationaler, also grenzüberschreitender Ebene zusammen. Entscheidend sind einerseits nationale, also staatliche Entscheidungen, internationale Institutionen, welche die Umsetzung dieser Entscheidungen vereinfachen, technologischer Fortschritt in den Bereichen Transport, Bildung, Produktion und Kommunikation, sowie schließlich ausländische Direktinvestitionen als eine der Möglichkeiten, diese neuen Technologien zu verbreiten und Entwicklungsprozesse zu unterstützen.
In an ‘era of globalisation’ political participation and citizenship are issues that need to be discussed within a wider global context that reaches beyond the borders of Europe. European politics is increasingly reflective of the dilemmas and challenges of the politics of citizenship. On the one hand, there are ongoing debates about the relationship between the nation-state (the traditional site securing citizenship) and the regional institutions of the European Union (EU). There are concerns about identities and accountabilities, borders and regulations. On the other, there is an acknowledgement of the expanded sense of ‘Europe’, and expanded citizenship therefore, and its links to the wider world. Due to the changing structures of international relations, new laws and policies on immigration (on national and regional levels, that is, the EU, African Union and any other regional arrangements), and new forms of multilateral co-operation (such as international civil society networking within and without Europe), political participation cannot be understood without taking into consideration that wider context.
Es ist unbestritten, dass die Demokratie gegenwärtig von mehreren Seiten bedrängt wird. Zum einen schaffen der Klimawandel, aber auch andere Risiken mit transnational spürbaren Auswirkungen (etwa Fukushima) eine schiere Notwendigkeit, Modi transnationalen Handelns und transnationaler Regulierung zu kreieren. Nationale demokratische Parlamente allein können eine wie auch immer geartete Einhegung von Krisenfolgen nicht mehr leisten. Die Demokratie wächst jedoch diesem Regelungsdruck äußerst langsam und auch nur in wenigen Teilen der Welt hinterher.
Feminist studies of political economy have long pointed to the multifaceted ways in which global transformations are constituted by deeply gendered economic practices at the everyday level. Nonetheless, the increased analytical focus on the everyday within the study of international political economy (IPE) frequently fails to connect with feminist theories and gendered approaches. In this introductory essay, we argue that any discussion of a ‘turn’ towards the everyday in IPE must acknowledge the role of feminist contributions that predate, and indeed make possible, this shift in IPE scholarship's analytical gaze towards the everyday. We map out what might be understood as feminist political economies of the everyday—highlighting the points of connection between feminist scholarship on the everyday, as well as the ways in which feminist scholars engage with the notion of an everyday political economy in quite distinct and diverse ways—a diversity that reflects the methodological and theoretical pluralism of feminist political economy scholarship as well as the ever broadening geographical scope of feminist research.
Dieser vielzitierte Satz von Robert Cox umfasst zwei Dimensionen kritischer Theoriebildung, die auch für die kritische feministische IPÖ zentral sind: Die erste Dimension bezieht sich darauf, dass die wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisgewinnung kein rein objektiver Prozess ist, durch den die Realität abgebildet und erklärt wird. Nach Cox sind Theorien nicht einfach wertneutral, sondern sie spiegeln stets eine Perspektive wider, die vom jeweiligen Standpunkt der Betrachterinnen abhängt (Cox 1981: 128).
The important and crucial question of the relationship between women's poor access to productive resources such as land, property, income, employment, technology, credit, and education, and their likelihood of experiencing gender based violence and abuse is discussed. The role played by global processes such as neoliberal economic policies, armed conflict, natural disasters and other crises in reinforcing existing gender inequalities and creating new forms of marginalization are highlighted.
This article considers why and how the Millennium Development Goals Indicator 3.2: women’s share in wage employment in the nonagricultural sector, fails to provide a fuller picture on the links between women’s employment, empowerment and well-being. The article explores (a) the underpinning normative assumptions of “gender equality” and “development” as notions used in the construct of the Indicator, and (b) globalized neoliberal economic structures as its operating environment. Grounded in liberalism, and with modernization theory and the capabilities approach as its offspring, the Indicator inherits the liberalist notion of “gender difference” in which the public/private and the modern/tradition are depicted as binary opposites. Under the competitive global economic frameworks that assume and integrate gender difference, the Indicator is likely to prescribe gender policies that mold women into male-centered citizenship, neglecting the social reproduction needs and care work that women assume. Drawing on the evidence of care chains in Ecuador, this article argues that the promotion of women’s employment as a means to achieve gender equality as pursued by many development organizations must be treated with caution, given the flaws inherent in its underlying normative assumptions of gender equality and the current economic systems.
Der im Juli 2004 verÖffentliche UNDP Human Development Report 2004 kommt zu der erschütternden Bilanz, dass in vielen Teilen
der Welt der Lebensstandard heute niedriger ist als im Jahr 1990. Oder anders ausgedrückt, die Not in vielen Ländern ist grÖ\er
als 1990. Nach dem Human Development Index (HDI)1 eines Landes, der die durchschnittliche Lebenserwartung, Gesundheit und
Bildungsstand der BevÖlkerung erfasst, ist seit 1990 weltweit in zwanzig Ländern ein Entwicklungsrückschritt eingetreten.
Beim derzeitigen Entwicklungstempo wird die Einhaltung der im Jahr 2000 von den 184 Staats- und Regierungschefs der damaligen
Mitgliedsstaaten der Vereinten Nationen beschlossenen Milleniumsziele2 verfehlt. Das Ziel, die grundlegende Schulbildung für
alle Kinder bis 2015 zu ermÖglichen, wird voraussichtlich erst im Jahr 2129 erreicht und die Senkung der Kindersterblichkeit
um zwei Drittel im Jahr 2106 (UNDP-HDR 2004).
Der Lebensstandard von Frauen weltweit unterscheidet sich noch erheblich von dem der Männer. 70% aller Armen in der Welt sind
Frauen, in den Parlamenten der Welt sitzen im Durchschnitt nur 16,4% weibliche Abgeordnete, zwei Drittel aller Analphabeten
sind weiblich und nach Schätzungen der UN werden jährlich mindestens zwei Millionen Mädchen und Frauen genital verstümmelt
(Uta Ruppert 2003). Diese Daten sind symptomatisch für Ungerechtigkeiten, denen Frauen immer noch weltweit ausgesetzt sind
— so zumindest könnte man argumentieren. Schnell aber stö\t man dabei auf Vorbehalte. Denn man müsste näher bestimmen können,
was globale Gerechtigkeit hei\t und was dies aus feministischer Per-spektive bedeutet. Schon diese Fragen aber werden bei nicht wenigen Gerech-tigkeitstheoretikerInnen Stirnrunzeln und
bei vielen Feministinnen allenfalls ein müdes Lächeln hervorrufen.
Violence against women is a major problem in all countries, affecting women in every socio-economic group and at every life stage. Nowhere in the world do women share equal social and economic rights with men or the same access as men to productive resources. Economic globalization and development are creating new challenges for women's rights as well as some new opportunities for advancing women's economic independence and gender equality. Yet, when women have access to productive resources and they enjoy social and economic rights they are less vulnerable to violence across all societies. The Political Economy of Violence against Women develops a feminist political economy approach to identify the linkages between different forms of violence against women and macro structural processes in strategic local and global sites - from the household to the transnational level. In doing so, it seeks to account for the globally increasing scale and brutality of violence against women. These sites include economic restructuring and men's reaction to the loss of secure employment, the abusive exploitation associated with the transnational migration of women workers, the growth of a sex trade around the creation of free trade zones, the spike in violence against women in financial liberalization and crises, the scourge of sexual violence in armed conflict and post-crisis peacebuilding or reconstruction efforts and the deleterious gendered impacts of natural disasters. Examples are drawn from South Africa, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, China, Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, the Pacific Islands, Argentina, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Haiti, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Iceland.
The focus in the gender and migration literature has moved from the recovery of women's experiences, to the mainstreaming of gender within migration studies, to intersectionality. Both mainstreaming and intersectionality have proven to be fertile grounds for cross-fertilization with other fields of social analysis beyond migration studies. This review examines three sites where this happens: migrant care work, transnational families, and gendered analysis of migration policies. First, I briefly cover the shift from a gender mainstreaming approach to an intersectionality approach. I then examine the literature on migrant care work and its contribution to the analysis of economic globalization. I continue with how analyses of transnational parenting may widen our perspective on gender and the family. Finally, I look at how work that integrates gender into its analysis of migration policies may provide new understandings of citizenship.
In this paper we argue that the gap between economic analysis and the rest of human life needs to be explored and bridged. The difference in economic criteria being applied to our life-worlds is often justified by the statement that economic analysis is only attempting to explain a certain part of life – albeit an important one. The danger is that this artificial separation allows distortions to creep in because in the real world issues to do with ‘body politics’, and social reproduction more broadly, permeate economics as well as all other aspects of life. International Political Economy (IPE) has sought to bring together the study of states and the study of markets in a global context. What needs doing now is to extend and transform the scope of IPE by incorporating the study of households and the function of social reproduction centrally in the analysis. In dealing with gaps and dissonances, feminist and gender research provides cross-disciplinary analysis and targeted research tools, addressing, in particular the issues arising from the unequal structural position of women and men in social and economic spheres. This kind of research has also opened up certain concepts, for example, production and the market to political scrutiny and demonstrated how these re-conceptualised elements, together with new concepts like social reproduction and the care economy might be integrated into mainstream political economy both at the theoretical and policy levels (Elson, 1995). In this paper we explore these issues in moredetail. This involves establishing the dimensions of the problem, as demonstrated first by the way in which IPE and other related disciplines continue to marginalize rather than incorporate feminist work, and second by the treatment in mainstream economics of the role of the household. We go on to set the problem in its global context, examining the decline of ‘embedded liberalism’, the rise of the competition state and the implications of this for women. We then look at the debate on these issues in both its structural and post-modern forms and how this throws light on contemporary situations. . Finally, we present an alternative conceptualisation, which gives equal weight to the domestic, market and state spheres and suggest two different ways in which the incorporation of the domestic into the international political economy might be theorised. In all of this, we are interested in solutions, which have resonance in both South and North and help to reveal the structural links between them.
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