Gender-trade and development policies
How is gender integrated into EU’s trade and development policies?
Gender: a controversial concept Debate ”Nature vs education-
socialization” From social biology (sex as part of
nature) to: gender as a product of socialization
Gender as a socially/contextualized interpretation of biological sex, as a social construction of sex
Globalization and SAP
Two faces of economic restructuring The export model-to find new niches-
to be exported at any cost Foreign trade and foreign investment-
the new key words in the globalization era
SAP-measures and women SAP and women-taking from the state-
social care responsibilities-putting them on women
Reduction of fiscal deficits, promotion of export oriented industrial and agriculture production and attraction of direct investment-less jobs and less income
Opening of the economies-no more industry protection or subsidies
Privatization-selling state assets and infrastructure (like energy production communication, etc)
SAP: consequences Poor and small farmers neglected-
food sovereignty –forgotten Small and middle national
enterprises-sacrificed to international competitiveness (ISI-gains erased)
Middle classes-impoverished and poor groups-specially women-very affected
Reactions: fundamentalism-religious and cultural: anti-westernization
The ”maquiladora model” and women
The global chain production: at the search of cheap, docile and unorganized labour
Women the majority of the workers in low-skilled, labor-intensive sectors, concentrated in the lower segments of the occupational hierarchies,
Particularly vulnerable to individual and structural discrimination and abuse
Women (or feminisation of cheap labour) as a motor into globalization
Women-are forced to go into the labour market to make ends meet: women and feminisation of export jobs as the reserve army of labour for export competitiveness-underpaid workers in all low wage export industries (industrial and agro-export) in the global South
Globalization and women
Moreover: women workers in the informal sector-used and abused by the global chain production: as easy prey to sub-contractors
Flexibilization-a way to make production more efficient- putting more and more formal work into the informal market
Service sector-more and more informal
Applying a gender perspective to trade policies
Applying a gender perspective to trade policies means overcoming the divide between social and economic policies, giving access to affordable essential services and social security, and enforcing women’s and poor people’s right to food, health, education and livelihoods
Some consequences of trade
Export model in outsourcing products and services-women as workers
Privatisation: resources and services More women in the informal sector women as migrants: 50-95% of all
migrants in the world: import of maids, traffiking-prostitution, bride-post orders, sexual tourism.
Trade liberalisation in agriculture
Livelihoods and food security: favours the development of large-scale
commercial, input-intensive, export-oriented farming
undermine small-scale farming for subsistence or local markets, which has been based on biodiversity, indigenous knowledge systems and exchange of local seeds, mostly done by women
Trade liberalization in agriculture-2
It encourages consolidation of land holdings, monocultures and the introduction of machinery, while women still struggle to gain land rights and access to credit, technology and information.
leads to the depletion of common land and state forests, which were used by women for collection of fuel, fodder, water, oil seeds and fruit, as well as roots and herbs for nutritional and medical purposes.
Also: women as agriculture workers
Women work as unpaid family labour on their husband’s cash crop fields, as hired labourers on large-scale commercial farms and plantations or
recently as small scale contract farmers who produce non-traditional agricultural exports comprising vegetables, fruits and flowers for foreign buyers
Agro-exports-also feminised
In many countries horticulture for export and agro-industries have become new feminised sectors of the economy because of their labour intensity
Gendered consequences
Opening markets and trade liberalisation have redistributive effects and change national economies as gendered processes of production, reproduction and consumption
Is this form of female labour a liberation or another sort of oppression?
Liberal views: labour gives women independence-takes them out of the patriarchal family-empowers them
Critical/leftist views: enterprise owners replace the husband-female workers controlled, exploited, double or triple burden
From WID to GAD Recognizing the women’s contribution
to the economy and to development-from a liberal perspective (WID-1970s) to an empowering perspective (GAD)
From above: WB-gender action plan Gender Equality as Smart Economics (2006) to EU’s discourses on gender equality in development cooperation
Gender: successfully mainstreamed into development policy?
International organizations: all have adopted gender sensitive guidelines: for ex.EU, WB, FMI, OECD, MDGs
Fragile gains, sometimes without support for implementation-WB evaluation of the gender dimension in WB policies-disappointing -Poverty reduction Strategy papers-very little discussion of gender issues.
Women’s rights organiz. in Paris declaration on Aid 2005
Women’s rights organizations not part of the 2nd High Level Forum and initially had not taken into consideration the potential impacts of this new Declaration. The Declaration was very technical and only focused on aid delivery and management mechanisms, but in practice the Aid Effectiveness agenda became a predominant framework that is guiding most donors’ efforts to improve aid quality.
From the women’s rights perspective
the Millennium Declaration and the Paris Declaration are regressive frameworks for guiding development aid, compared to the achievements of the UN conferences of the nineties, the Monterrey Consensus and the overall internationally agreed development goals (IADG)3 and above all, a setback with respect to the existing instruments of Human Rights.
Trade and development?
Trade liberalisation and export growth are equated with development benefits
But: no evidence that they are actually pro-poor and that the neoclassical assumption of the ‘trickle-down effect’ of wealth will work out.
EU-from development aid to trade
The EU is in the process of reducing its aid for human development and its anti-poverty programmes
For ex: India perceived not as a developing but as a threshold country
shifting assistance to economic cooperation and aid for trade
Gender diferential
based on the gender division of labour – in the market as well as in the household –
On women’s and men’s different access to and control over resources such as assets, rights and time, and on cultural ascriptions of gender stereotypes and norms
UNCTAD-trade and gender
UNCTAD carried out a gender analysis of the different WTO agreements
Conclusions: gender differences continue to exist, women are more often affected by negative impacts of trade liberalisation than men
But: free trade provides new market and job opportunities for women
Final reflections-why gender?
A way to see the social consequences of liberalization and the new neoliberal models concretized by free trade
FTAS: a violent way of modernization where social structures of inequality become even more unequal
Women’s lobby on EU’s development policies?
WIDE: a dismantled organization But:nowdays: WIDEplus:
http://wideplusnetwork.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/find-out-more-about-wide-plus/