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Women’s employment in the textile manufacturing sectors of Bangladesh and Morocco force. 2 The relationship between export-oriented industrialization and feminization is particularly strong for economies specializing in commodities that require low-skill content and labour-intensive methods of production. However, the phenomenon of female-led and export-led growth has been both geographically patchy as well as highly volatile (Pearson, 1998). Even in Asia and Latin America — the epicentre of this genre of manufacturing — export-oriented and female-intensive firms have gained a foothold only in some countries, while complex political and economic factors have precluded their emergence in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Moreover, the feminization of the workforce is not necessarily a sustainable or an irreversible process. In Hong Kong, for instance, the emergence of new low-cost competitors in the Asia-Pacific region and the erosion of Hong Kong’s own cost advantage caused growth in manufacturing industries to slacken and eventually decline in the late 1980s, as investment moved to countries with lower wage costs (e.g. southern China). The implications for manufacturing employment, and especially for the women who have made up the majority of the rank-and-file workers have been serious and more complex than the “frictionless” picture painted by the government and by many economists (Chiu and Lee, 1997). Micro-level studies provide an account of the “fading of the Hong Kong dream” which has “pushed working class women down the class ladder and backward to domesticity as their gender destiny” (Chiu and Lee, 1997:759). Women’s share of employment in the export processing zones of Mexico has also declined from its peak in the early 1980s — not, however, because of a loss of production facilities, but rather because of technological upgrading that has eliminated many of the low-skill jobs held primarily by women (Beneria, 1995; Pearson, 1991a). Bangladesh may face both of these problems in coming years, as the trade advantage it has enjoyed because of the Multi-Fibre Agreement is set to expire in 2005. Technological upgrading will almost certainly be necessary for the garment industry to remain competitive under more open trade regimes, and women’s low literacy rates will preclude many from obtaining higher skilled jobs (Battacharya and Rahman, this volume). The rise in women’s share of manufacturing employment associated with export-oriented industrialization has been explained in a variety of ways. Joekes (1987, 1995) and Elson (1995) have argued that it is due to the tendency for many newly industrializing countries to specialize in labour-intensive manufacturing sectors in which 4
Introduction women have been traditionally employed, such as textiles, clothing and footwear. Thus the increased female labour force participation rate reflects an expansion of traditional women’s activities, with women employed in largely female sectors and the gender division of labour remaining essentially intact. Standing (1989), on the other hand, suggests that women workers have been substituted for men workers by employers seeking more flexible, docile and cheap labour as global competition increases. The chapters in this volume suggest that the traditional gender division of labour and the perception of women’s dexterity helped to determine the initial choice of female workers in the garment industries, while women’s docility, their willingness to accept non-formal employment status, and consequently the flexibility they impart to the factory workforce have been important factors contributing to employers’ continued preference for female workers (see esp. Bourqia and Khan). The implications of women’s increasing participation in export manufacturing is also the subject of some disagreement. Ironically, some of the most negative assessments of women’s entry into exportoriented manufacturing were made in the context of the first-tier newly industrialized countries (NICs) such as Hong Kong and Taiwan. While there is no doubt that incomes and wages, including women’s wages, rose spectacularly over a short period of time in these countries, both the gender gap in wages and the degree of occupational segregation has remained large by international standards, and has shown little sign of diminishing over time (Joekes, 1995). A more positive assessment of the impact of export-oriented industrialization for women workers — frequently made by neoclassical advocates — compares this type of industrialization to import-substitution industrialization (ISI). It is argued that ISI tends to provide jobs for a male “labour aristocracy”, which generally excludes women, whereas the types of industry that expand in response to foreign market opportunities in an open trading regime rely heavily on the use of a female workforce. It is further argued that, in the long run, trade will raise aggregate incomes and wages in developing countries and in the process reduce the gender gap in wages. The assumption behind this assertion seems to be that in a trade-expansionary context the demand for female labour increases faster than that for male labour, so that female wages also rise faster than male wages, and eventually converge (Joekes, 1995). The disagreements over how to assess female employment in export-oriented manufacturing are due largely to disagreements over what such employment should be compared to. Even though most 5
Page 1 and 2: Women’s Employment in the Textile
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Wage discrimination by gender in Mo
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Gender dimensions of labour migrati
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Becoming a garment worker 5Becoming
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Becoming a garment worker Cole P. D
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