*{Women's Labor: A Key Factor in Globalization 
By Elmira Nazombe,
Center for Women's Global Leadership 
Economic Justice News
March 20, 2000 (Reprinted from May 1999)} 

The opponents and promoters of globalization have one thing in common: 
undervaluing the role of women's labor in the process. Women and their labor 
are the unspoken factor in the globalization equation. As the policy makers of 
globalization make their decisions, women's presence as both paid and unpaid 
labor, as consumers, care givers and even as community activists is taken for 
granted and necessary to the "success " of free market strategies. Women's 
labor is the unarticulated ingredient in the World Bank/ IMF formula for the 
`economic success' that includes cutting subsidies to public services, 
shifting from food crops to export crops, and attracting foreign investment 
with a low wage labor pool. If women and their labor are central to the 
processes of globalization, are they not entitled to the fullness of their 
rights: the right to work, the right to social protection, the right to bodily 
integrity? 

*partie=titre Women's Labor Attracts Investors *partie=nil  
Transnational investment is a key strategy of globalization. Transnational 
investors demand a cheap and `flexible' labor force. Poor nations and 
communities recruit women workers in order to compete for investors by keeping 
wages as low as possible and safety requirements at a minimum. Women are very 
often temporary, part-time workers and/or home-based workers, with little 
access to benefits, no job security in a low wage service sector job. This is 
the sector of largest job growth in many countries. Where is a woman worker's 
right to a freely choose a job which pays equal pay for work of equal value? 
Where is a woman worker's right to safe and healthy working conditions and 
just and fair wages that will make possible an existence worthy of human 
dignity? Does globalization give her equal opportunity for employment and 
protection from unemployment? There appears to be little or no room for the 
rights of women workers under globalization. But can globalization work if 
women don't work? 

*partie=titre Women's Work Key to Debt Repayment *partie=nil  
Failed development strategies have resulted in huge external debts for many 
countries. The World Bank and other development donors make it clear that 
access to new development funds requires the repayment of that debt. Some 
countries have only human resources to export and therefore encourage hundreds 
of thousands of women to leave their own countries to work in other countries. 
The increasing poverty in their own country means that overseas work is the 
only means available to support their families. But taking this path to 
survival means living where one is denied the legal protectiongiven to 
citizens and often sexual abuse and intimidation. The remittances of these 
migrant workers help provide the much needed hard currency for the payment of 
external debt. Can the debt be repaid if women never work as migrants?
 
*partie=titre Women's Unpaid Labor Makes Up for Cuts in Social Services *partie=nil  
The philosophy of globalization considers the market the supreme actor in the 
society, best able to deliver services for the public welfare. Therefore, 
governments must seriously cut back their role in social services. Structural 
Adjustment Programs mandate cuts in social programs in the Third World. In 
North America and Europe cuts in public assistance cash payments and 
subsidized public services like health care weaken and eliminate the social 
safety nets. The cuts are said to be essential to streamline the government 
costs so that the nation is better able to be competitive. These policies have 
a devastating and disproportionate impact on poor women and children. These 
services can be cut because it is assumed that women will walk farther and 
wait longer for health service. Policy makers assume that women will be there 
to take on the extra burden of sick parents and children. 

What happened to the promise in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that 
each citizen can expect that the state will help them to survive in the times 
of adversity like unemployment and old age? That children are entitled to 
protection regardless of the status of their birth? Can communities survive if 
women are not around to supplement tasks of social protection?
 
*partie=titre Even Women's Bodies are Globalization Commodities *partie=nil  
Ironically it is the excesses of wealth that globalization has generated in 
some parts of the world, especially some parts of Europe and Asia, the 
increased demand for a different kind of women's labor that has led to a 
dramatic and frightening increase in trafficking in women for prostitution and 
sex tourism. Women's bodies become just another commodity to be bought and 
sold. Intimidation and physical and mental violence and abuse are common 
place. Women have few if any legal protections or resources. How can the 
commodification of women's bodies be stopped and the right to security of 
person and the right to bodily integrity proclaimed in international human 
rights documents be upheld? Can there be a sex industry without exploited sex 
workers? 

*partie=titre Valuing Women's Labor Requires Women's Rights *partie=nil  
If women's labor is a critical factor in many of the mechanisms that make 
globalization work then the impact of those mechanisms on women's rights have 
to be taken seriously. The economic models that underpin globalization need to 
be transformed not just to ease women's pain but to give them full respect for 
the role they can play in a global system of well-being and justice. A global 
economic system in which women are central must be one in which women enjoy 
their full human rights. 

*{[Editor's Note: We present this article both in honor of Women's History Month 
and as a lead-in for the upcoming anti-Corporate Globalization demonstrations 
in Washington, DC on April 16.]}