Job losses have only just begun

GAINS BY WOMEN REVERSED IN ECONOMIC DOWNTURN

Bangkok (United Nations Information Services) -- With the current economic crisis and the intensification of unemployment in the manufacturing and service sectors, governments should not cut back social spending but design their adjustment policies and programmes to be sensitive to women's needs.

Decentralization of public resources and greater participation of local players, including NGOs to work with policy makers in formulating meaningful policy decisions is vital. These were some of the ideas and issues debated at a recent regional forum in Bangkok on The Impact of Globalization on Women organized by the Women in Development Section, Social Development division of UN/ESCAP.

Foremost among the issues that emerged: the feminization of employment.

The growing participation of women, as well as their increasing share of total employment, have been evident across the developing world since 1980, but most sharply in Asia. The productive contribution of Asian women to the boom is now widely recognized as women were significant contributors to household income.

In the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, this feminization of work in much of the Asian region occurred in a context of overall economic growth. The high and rising proportion of women workers in total employment has been especially marked in countries where export-oriented manufacturing has been prominent, e.g. Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Sri Lanka. While there are some variations (such as the much lower proportions evident in India and Pakistan) this general pattern has resulted from employers' needs for cheaper and more "flexible" sources of labour given the rigours of international trade competition.

More recently computer technology and communications, particularly in the banking and insurance sectors have brought new opportunities for the employment of women. Nevertheless, feminization of the labour force continues to be encouraged by the widespread perception that female employees are more tractable and subservient to managerial authority, less prone to organize into unions, more willing to accept lower wages, less likely to expect upward job mobility and easier to dismiss using life-cycle criteria such as marriage and childbirth.

While the conditions under which feminization has occurred suggest that it has been associated with inferior pay and working conditions for women, it is also true that access to earned income has substantially improved many women's positions. Given the strong patriarchal traditions in most of Asia, the ability to earn outside income can become an important instrument for the transformation of gender relations. However, the recent economic crisis has tended to reverse the positive aspect of this process although as economic conditions have worsened, it is likely that gender gaps will be reduced through worsening conditions of male workers.

While these issues are now widely known, the growing feminization of unemployment is more recent and less commented upon. In the most recent period women workers are disproportionately losing jobs due to retrenchment in manufacturing and services activities. This was inevitable given that women were originally preferred as workers largely because of the greater ease of dismissal among other things.

This process of retrenchment and job loss has only just begun.

Despite the currency devaluations across the region, it has been forecast that export growth will not revive sufficiently to allow for the revival of employment generation at the same pace as the past decade. All this points to shrinking employment in the medium term across South-East Asia, and very little hope for rapid employment expansion in South Asia which is also in the throes of economic crisis at present. As most of these countries have no safety nets for unemployed workers, the potential social and economic problems are huge.

In addition, the current deflationary adjustment policies will adversely affect women not only as workers, but as household providers, mothers, etc., due to a reduction in: (1) government expenditure and (2) state activity in general (which comes as part of the stabilization exercise) hence greater reliance on the market mechanism. Real incomes will be reduced as will standards of living for most women who will assume a greater burden of unpaid work.

In addition, where many women have been forced in such circumstances to seek additional income outside the home, this had put pressure on girl-children who have to take up some of the activities of the household and child care otherwise performed by their mothers. In extreme cases this has let to their withdrawal from schooling (such as evidenced from educational statistical data in Thailand) and other negative effects. Other negative features are in the area of food security - a critical issue throughout South Asia, China, Indonesia as well as other parts of the region. Increases in the relative price of food put pressure on real consumption within households and it is widely acknowledged that in many Asian societies, especially South Asia, social and cultural norms are such that women and girl children face disproportionately excessive cuts in their food consumption when household per capita access to food declines.

Noting the recent trends of unemployment brought on by the economic crisis and partly by new technological trends of production which have let to the reduction of women workers, the UN/ESCAP meeting furthermore urged governments not to create further unemployment but rather to seek alternative and creative employment opportunities to keep the workforce at work, such as job-sharing arrangements or flexible working hours.

It called on governments to provide greater opportunities for training and re-training, and to give expanded support to the informal sectors where women were becoming increasingly engaged in self-employment and entrepreneurship activities.

The need for social safety nets were emphasized to provide women protection to alleviate the social consequences of large scale disruption of the employment market at national level and beyond national borders as migrant women workers may be forced to return home.

In pointing out the rising incidences of child labour and related issues of the increasing school drop-out rate among girl students, the meeting called on policy makers to take creative measures to counter these negative trends citing as possible suggestions school subsidies to keep children in school longer as well the establishment of local community-based schools as an alternative to public schools. Institutions such as UN/ESCAP were urged to assume a greater and more active advocacy role with governments as they tackle the economic crisis and its 'contagion effect'.

As the Asian economic crisis enters into its second year with no signs of improvement in the immediate future, it is critical that effective measure be taken to respond to the impact on women. There are grave fears that as unemployment continues to increase across all sectors from manufacturing to the financial and service-related industries, this will give rise to a growing commodification of women as unemployed women seek work in the euphemistically termed "entertainment" industry and may be lured, often unwittingly by unscrupulous sex-traffickers to work as prostitutes locally, across borders and further afield. Experts have also warned that conditions are ripe for an increasing incidence of violence against women who are often vulnerable targets of frustrated aspirations. There is also the additional apprehension of a traditionalist reaction during times of economic crisis manifested in the redomestication of women. All these responses will set back important achievements in gender emancipation and erode the advances which women have painstakingly gained in the region.