Women Working Worldwide: Taking on Global Capital

1. Women Working Worldwide: Taking on Global Capital International Perspectives on Gender Week 20

2. Structure of Lecture • Introduction and Context • Why Female Labour? • Explaining Low Wages • Women Organising: Trade Unions • Consumer Power: Fair Trade • Ethical Trade and Codes of Conduct • Conclusions

3. Introduction and Context • NIDL: clothing, textiles, electronics, agribusiness, pharmaceuticals, customer services, care work • Not all production in UK is high-value added, high capital intensity, high pay • Capital takes advantage of gender, class and racial hierarchies • UK Homeworking • Men?

4. Why Female Labour? • Demand for women workers • Perceived by employers as highly skilled, reliable, willing and ‘docile’ • This means higher productivity than men but less likely to complain or organize for higher wages • Women’s skills and compliance assumed by employers to be natural • Elson and Pearson: dexterity and docility are socially produced • Women workers do organise but face barriers

5. Explaining Women’s Poor Relative Wages • Higher productivity natural, not warranting reward • Skills ‘saturated by sex’ • Women cost more in other benefits, it evens out • Women only need ‘pin money’, are ‘working for lipstick’ • Women’s disadvantaged position in society is systematically exploited by capital • But why do women work for low wages? • - identify first with housework and childcare • - lack sense of entitlement, don’t push • - barriers to organising

6. Gendered Performance, Perception and Exit • Transnational Indian call centres: exceptions? - Men and women as likely to be employed - No gender wage gap - No perceived female or male skills • But gender is at work: - performing femininity - only women see work as ‘technical’ - marriage = exit for women women

7. Impact of Women’s Employment in Transnational Production Pros Cons Financial independence May give wage to family, employment insecure Improved self-esteem Poor wages Chance to organise Poor working conditions, health risks Greater decision-making Double-burden of work role in household Elson and Pearson: Impact contradictory

8. Women Organising • 1977: UN proclaimed 8 March day for women’s rights and international peace: International Women’s Day • Origins in 8 March 1857 protest by female clothing and textile workers in New York • 8 March 1908 15,0000 women marched in New York • 1909: March 8 celebrated as national women’s day • 1911: First International Women’s Day

9. Women and Trade Unions • Collective bargaining can be an effective way to improve wages and working conditions • Strike by Turkish women pharmaceutical workers in won a 3-year collective agreement on pay and conditions • Challenges: unions may be banned union leaders may be harassed, dismissed ‘sweetheart’ unions may be established union agenda may not reflect priorities of women workers employers may threaten to move production

10. Fair Trade • From 3 products in 1994 to 3000+ • Sales = £1.5 billion • Fair Trade Mark:guarantees: - agreed minimum prices - agreed social premium - direct purchase - co-operation, information - long-term, transparent trading - access to credit advances - democratic organization of farmers / workers - sustainable production - no labour abuses • Evolved from fair trade shops

11. From Niche to Mainstream… → → → →

12. Challenges for Fair Trade • I’ve queried commodification of producers’ lives and landscapes in brand creation: - over-simplification and ‘othering’ - no ‘reverse gaze’

13. Hutchens doubts fair trade empowers women producers: - fair-trade standards include women but don’t address structural barriers they face - organisations are male dominated - fair trade premiums may not ‘trickle-down’ - ‘charity’ model for handicrafts belies partnership and limits competitiveness and market share - gender inequalities seen as ‘cultural’ and ‘no-go’

14. Ethical Trade • Codes of Conduct: typically guaranteeing living wages, freedom of association and collective bargaining, safe working conditions etc. • Already covered by ILO Conventions but not enforced • Consumer pressure works; puts brand reputation at risk • Forces companies to accept responsibility down the sub-contracting chains

15. Challenges for Ethical Trade • Is monitoring and enforcement adequate? • Do workers know about the codes? • Is freedom of association and collective bargaining excluded? • Danger of ‘fairwashing’ • ‘Home-grown’ codes likely to be weaker • Can codes challenge ‘logic of capitalism’? • … ‘the retail companies at the top of the subcontracting chains are themselves creating the conditions that operate against attempts to implement their own codes of conduct’ (Hale and Shaw, 2001, p. 521) • Do codes put some out of work? • Are they gender-sensitive?

16. Mis-recognition of workers • ‘Home-grown’ FlorVerde code = good PR for Colombian cut flower industry but inadequate labour rights • Strategies of industry under pressure: • - denial: smears, work important alternative to cocaine • - rebuttal: work redeems ‘backward’ peasant producers • Misrecognition (Fraser): disrespectful stereotyping and • cultural domination used to ‘legitimate’ low wages • - limited acceptance: bring in FlorVerde (focus on • environmental not labour standards, self-certified) • - displace workers’ problems to patriarchal, conflictual • family (‘solution’ is conflict-management courses)

17. New Initiatives: the FairPhone →

18. Conclusions • NIDL targets female workers as highly productive, compliant and willing to work for less than men • Women’s lower status in society translates into a lower labour market position (same for inequalities of class, ‘race’/ethnicity) • Impact of employment on women’s status is contradictory • Women workers are not docile; long history of organising but face many barriers • Consumer pressure can also raise wages and working conditions via fair trade and ethical trade • How involved are the workers themselves? How are they used to sell the idea of fair trade? • Are particular challenges for women taken into account? • Danger of ‘fairwashing’ • Can’t expect economic justice without cultural justice