Women's Employment - United Nations Research Institute for Social ...

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
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