McCormick+Schmitz Handbook for value chain research on - PACA

Most homeworkers in both developed and developing countries have no special status
under the law. They are, there<strong>for</strong>e, classified as either employees or independent
contractors, depending on the relevant labour legislation and the preference of ‘employer.’
Since many of the enterprises using homeworkers are doing so in order to increase
flexibility and reduce costs, their tendency is to treat homeworkers as self-employed.
This leaves the homeworkers in a vulnerable position, especially those in industrial
homework where isolation and low skills make collective bargaining difficult.
7. Gender analysis
In many cultures making clothing is considered “women’s work” and, in fact, the garment
industry labour <strong>for</strong>ce is heavily female in most parts of the world. It is not, however,
uni<strong>for</strong>mly so across all job categories. Furthermore, not only do the resources, activities,
and rewards available to men and women in the industry as a whole vary considerably,
but they also differ from one <strong>chain</strong> segment to another. For this reason, you may find it
helpful to undertake a gender analysis of the garment <strong>chain</strong>(s) you are examining.
The two terms - gender and sex - designating the differences between male and female are
frequently confused. The distinction between them is conceptually fairly simple. “Sex” is
a biological term based on a person’s physical characteristics, while “gender” is an
abstract category linked to the social realities of male and female members of any society.
Un<strong>for</strong>tunately sex is often confused with gender. Garment producers, <strong>for</strong> example, often
say that they prefer female workers because they have “nimble fingers.” In most cases,
their dexterity is less a result of the physical structure of the women’s fingers than of their
early socialisation as girls who have been taught to sew, embroider, knit, etc. In other
words, nimble fingers, if they exist, are not a characteristic of the female sex, but of
gender, i.e., the social institutions that govern the way female members of the society are
brought up. This may seem like an abstraction, but it is an important distinction because
when sex is substituted <strong>for</strong> gender, women (or men) may be unfairly discriminated against
because a learned behaviour has been mistaken <strong>for</strong> an unchangeable physical
characteristic.
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