art-e-conomy _ reader - marko stamenkovic

46
fact that they benefited from American investment during the Cold War period, which was
not the case in other countries. Also, the American government significantly intervened
in their economies through protectionist measures as well as direct policy and privileges
that were not granted elsewhere.
However, even if cheap labour did contribute to export growth as shown by the example
of the Asian Tigers, it is a strategy which is unfair and which should not be supported as
it actually leads to:
• Discrimination based on arbitrary features such as ethnicity, age and gender. This
strategy takes advantage of gender discrimination in wages and offers highly limited
opportunities to female workers.
• Workers are not adequately remunerated for the work they do.
• Workers are not free to choose their employment conditions, as their poverty gives
them no freedom of choice.
• Gender inequalities are increased.
• Women remain concentrated at the bottom of corporate hierarchy, on low-wage and
low-skill jobs, are the first to lose jobs in times of crises and the last to be re-employed.
• Men typically take up technical, supervision and monitoring jobs, and are first to
be trained for automated work. This, of course, means that as jobs become mechanised,
they are given to men.
• There are a lot of examples of sexual harassment, frequent overtime work and
insufficient work safety.
• There are a lot of examples of women having highly limited control of their own
wages in favour their husbands. As elsewhere, the extra income contributed by the wife
is often used for the improvement of perspectives of sons rather than daughters.
• Gender stereotypes are strengthened rather than broken.
Generally speaking, a country’s orientation to cheap female labour can easily bring a
country to a low development pattern with few comparative advantages, low investment
levels and thereby low economic growth.
Of course, nobody can deny that there are women who benefit from the jobs they do
in export oriented industry. There are cases when a woman’s position in the household
is improved as a result of the increase in her wage, that women’s autonomy is increased
in personal issues such as choosing a husband or refusing a marriage. For a woman,
being employed also means having higher self-esteem and wider social opportunities and
choices in life. For instance, even the possibility to travel alone represent and improvement
in the status. Despite gender inequalities and poverty, a job can at least offer a hope of
refuge from poverty.
However, even when it is true that women have a possibility to make the best out of bad,
should we accept the bad? Or should we acknowledge that the situation the women are
in does not provide them with real freedom of choice, and try to do something to change
the context in which women make decision? It is quite certain that it is not women who
choose to be exploited or accept bad working conditions. If they had a better alternative,
their choice would be different. A typical macroeconomic environment in which women
make decisions includes structural adaptation programmes, debt liabilities, labour
market deregulation and the recommendations of the International Monetary Fund.
These recommendations always include advice to reduce wages and lower employee