Fwd: neoliberalism through the eyes of women

[Claudia Westermann]

forwarding some viewpoint / an extract of the Focus on Trade Newsletter

To: focus-on-trade at yahoogroups.com


>NEOLIBERALISM THRHOUGH THE EYES OF WOMEN
>Joo-Yeon Jeong & Seung-Min Choi*
>
>There is no place on Earth where neo-liberalism has not poisoned.
>It has allowed a handful of private interests to control as much as
>possible of social life in order to maximize personal profit. It has
>poisonous effects especially in the Third World, where imperial
>powers continue to pirate natural and human resources to fill the
>pockets of transnational capitalists. Initiated by Reagan and
>Thatcher, for the last two decades, neo-liberalism has become the
>dominant economic and political trend for much of the leftist (so
>they identify themselves) governments as well as the right.
>
>However, as women fighting against global capitalism and its new
>phase, as women yearning for a better world where we will not be
>exploited and abused, we must go a step further into looking into
>this 'neo-liberalism' through the experiences of women. And it is
>not just about how women linearly experience it - we must go into
>the depths to manifest how neo-liberalism operates in a very
>gender-biased way.
>
>WOMEN WORKERS AS SCAPEGOATS
>In Korea, the process of being absorbed into global capitalism
>began earlier than the economic crisis, during the economic 'hyper
>'-development era of military dictatorship of Park Jung-Hee, with
>quite a bit of help from the US. Fluctuating together with global
>economic crises, the Korean economy started to show signs of a
>recession from the early 90s, as rate of profit decreased. Thus,
>capitalists started to adopt policies of introducing flexibility to the
>labour market. It was 'experimented' on women workers first before
>taking full force on the entire working class at the end of the
>millennium.
>
>Jobs where women were predominant started to be transformed in
>the 1980s, beginning in the form of dispatch labour and eventually
>expanding to generalisation of irregular labour. However, this
>process was mainly targeted at women workers and the male-
>oriented labour movement did not give much importance to it, even
>though women worker's movement consistently called for the
>address of the issue.
>
>Although the incorporation of Korean economy into the global
>capitalist system had already started around a decade ago, Korean
>people came to experience its destructive nature during and after
>the economic crisis of 1997. The structural adjustment program of
>the IMF shook the labour market and massive lay-offs were
>implemented. In particular, women workers were laid off first, and
>the working conditions of women workers fell to the ground.
>
>The methods that the management used was subcontracting or
>abolishing those production lines and business sectors where
>women were predominant. Women in these places were usually
>typists or clerical assistants, who were considered not important
>and cumbersome, and thus provided the logic and justification for
>the lay-offs. Many companies would lay-off these women, and
>instead employ workers from dispatch companies - thus providing
>the management with ways in which to decrease labour costs and
>evade provision of insurances and benefits. Or in the case of
>banks, the same worker would be reemployed, but on a contract
>basis as irregular workers, again to decrease labour costs. Another
>method of laying off women workers or transforming them into
>irregular workers, was targeting foremost women who were married
>to someone in the same workplace, and also those who were
>pregnant or were on their maternal leave. They provided the
>management with strong justifications based on patriarchal values
>of 'women's place is at home'. This process of unjust and
>discriminatory lay-offs at the onset of the economic crisis saw the
>deterioration of maternal protection and women worker's rights in
>general. The achievements that the women worker's movement had
>accomplished over the last couple of decades were undermined.
>
>"FLEXIBILITY" OF WOMEN WORKERS
>The massive lay-offs that occurred after 1997 was obviously not
>'inevitable' on the part of the management, but was a calculated
>process of increasing the rate of profit through flexibility of the
>labour market. Because the need for lay-offs did not come simply
>from decrease in production, workers who were laid off were re-
>employed, but as irregular workers. And because flexibility
>measures were implemented foremost on women, women were
>also absorbed again in masses into the labour market, but this
>time as irregular workers with low wages and low protection.
>
>Attaining flexibility of women workers was backed up by the
>patriarchal ideology of 'male as breadwinner' [1]. Through this
>ideology, women workers are considered not really as workers, but
>as 'assistant income providers', the ideology that contributes to
>devaluation of women's work. And this in turn provided the
>justification for the primary lay-offs of women and transforming
>women's jobs into irregular jobs - a justification that quelled the
>possibility of resistance from the working class. Recently,
>capitalist institutions and mainstream media elaborate that the rate
>of women's employment is increasing faster that the rate of men.
>On one hand, this is due to the increase in absolute number of jobs-
>irregular jobs for women, but also due to the fact that women do
>not have much choice than take up highly unstable jobs without
>any hesitation to earn a living, whereas men can afford to be more
>'selective'.
>
>Now, the percentage of irregular workers is risen to higher levels
>than regular workers. In analyzing a census on the economically-
>active workforce implemented by the Korean Statistical Office in
>August 2001, the Korea Labor & Society Institute (www.klsi.org)
>estimated the number of irregular workers to be 7.37 million,
>constituting 55.7% of the total workforce. [2] According to studies
>made in 2000, out of entire irregular workers, the percentage of
>women is higher than that of men at 53%, and within the entire
>women workforce irregular workers take up 70%. These official
>statistics exclude specially employed labour (for example, the type
>of jobs that capitalists characterise as self-employment) such as
>private tutors, insurance sales, golf caddies etc., so if these jobs
>are included, the rate of irregular women workers will definitely
>rocket.
>
>Irregular work pertaining to capital's flexibility measures has
>brought deterioration of working conditions and impoverishment for
>workers of both genders. But it has affected women workers more
>severely. At the moment, most of irregular women workers are
>employed in small enterprises of less than 10 employees. It has
>driven women's work into the ditches and has also increased
>mental stress from lack of self-confidence and the fear of losing
>their jobs. One feminist scholar was interviewing irregular women
>workers and told of how the interviewees were in constant fear of
>being seen throughout the interview. Many social psychologists
>point out that the increase of irregular work and the mental stress
>that comes from it is becoming a serious social problem that is
>bound to affect the whole society.
>
>Moreover, with the automation of production lines and transfer of
>factories in capital's constant search for cheaper labour, many
>women workers who had originally constituted a large proportion of
>the workforce in the manufacturing sector are now being absorbed
>into the service sector - in areas such as the so-called
>'entertainment' businesses and as domestic workers. The service
>sector has rapidly expanded over the last few years in Korea, and
>many women are being employed as narrator models,
>telemarketers, and as servers and entertainers in bars. These jobs
>are not only unstable, low waged and physically strenuous, but
>they also enforce the use of 'femininity' and sexuality to raise
>sales, making women more vulnerable to possibilities of sexual
>abuse and exploitation. Also, because the service sector has
>always shared a very thin borderline with the sex industry, it is not
>very surprising that more and more women workers, both young
>and aged, are being drawn into the sex industry. For example,
>many married women in their 30's and 40's are employed in the so-
>called 'telephone rooms (jeon-hwa-bang)' and are forced to have
>phone sex with men. Many other married women were employed
>as 'pager women', who are paged to come to bars to 'entertain'
>men. This became a very heated issue when Daewoo Motors
>unionists went to a bar, paged women, and came face to face with
>familiar faces. When Daewoo workers were laid-off, the wives had
>to find jobs to sustain their families and the only ones available
>were as 'pager women'. The ruling elite and the conservative media
>are enthusiastically deploring the moral collapse of Korean women,
>but the reality is that it is the capitalist system that is corrupting
>the people.
>
>The situation is not much different on the international arena. Neo-
>liberal globalisation has paved the way for increase in migrant
>women workers, international trafficking and enforced sex work in
>the Third World. In Korea, many women from the Philippines and
>Russia come to Korea as domestic workers and 'entertainers', and
>then are tricked into providing sexual services to Korean men and
>the US military.
>
>WIDENING GAP BETWEEN WOMEN
>Neo-liberal globalisation has also impeded the widening of gap
>between different classes of women. The living standard between
>women in the developed countries and those in the Third World is
>now incomparable, as is the situation inside Korea. Rich women of
>the bourgeoisie can afford to wear fur coats that cost tens of million
>won, shop in department stores in their imported cars, buy US
>produced baby food, send their children to expensive private
>English language schools so that they are reproduced as the
>minority elite who rule the world of globalisation, and employ
>women from South-east Asia as housemaids. This is how the
>minority of women in Korea live, and furthermore, they are not living
>on the wealth that they had accumulated themselves, but on the
>wealth accumulated by their husbands. And this in turn is the
>wealth accumulated from exploiting women workers in Korea and
>elsewhere in the Third World. In contrast to the minority of women
>who enjoy the outcome of neo-liberal domination in a good part of
>the world, majority of women cannot find a proper job no matter
>how hard they try, and when they do find a job, it is an unstable job
>in slave-like conditions that can get snatched away from them.
>They cannot afford domestic help or a nanny - they work for long
>tiring hours outside and then come home to find piles of dishes to
>be washed and children to be fed. Also, studies by women's
>organizations have found that domestic abuse has increased, as
>husbands and fathers who have lost jobs turn to expressing their
>anger at their daughters and wives, and resort to violence.
>
>CULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL BACKLASH
>To quell mass resistance against economic globalisation that has
>brought about increase in unemployment, decrement of public
>services, downfall in wages and deterioration of quality of life, the
>ruling elite has manipulated cultural conservatism to solidify its
>dominance over society. Cultural conservatism in Korea is
>represented by Confucian patriarchy. The economic crisis of 1997
>saw the rise of this ideology that came together with the capitalist
>form of 'male as breadwinner' model, and acted to cover up the
>oppression of women while highlighting the need for women to
>make more sacrifices for the sake of saving the crumbling
>economy. In the meanwhile, unemployment of men was highlighted
>as a serious social problem. Thus the role of women was limited to
>that of 'comforting' the suffering man in the family, while the
>sufferings of women both as wage workers and non-wage workers
>were ignored. The Korean mainstream media and the conservative
>ruling elite alike have neglected the seriousness of women suffering
>from sexual abuse on the basis that women should have
>perseverance, but has spotlighted those desperate women who left
>home after losing all hopes as destructors of family values. Women
>who had replaced their husbands as the breadwinners end up in
>the sex industry, after being rejected from any other type of work,
>but then are stigmatised as being morally corrupt. The severity of
>unemployment of male youths appear in the news everyday,
>whereas female students are not only ignored but are blocked
>altogether from the labour market. Many right-wing sociologists and
>economists actually suggested that marriage for women should be
>more emphasized by the government so as to block women from
>entering the labour market - and thus lowering the official
>unemployment rate. The media focuses evermore on the fantasies
>of marriage, and the 'marriage business' is now enjoying its 'Belle
>Epoque'.
>
>A CRITIQUE OF KIM DAE-JUNG'S POLICIES ON WOMEN
>Kim Dae-Jung's government has been portrayed as being
>democratic and pro-feminist in and outside of Korea. There were
>high hopes for this president with his long history of fighting for
>democracy, and from the beginning, many civil and women's
>organizations decided to give him 'critical' support. However, his
>promise of establishing a ministry specific on women's issues was
>replaced by the Special Committee On Women's Affairs with no
>legislative powers, much to the disappointment of women's groups.
>As his presidential term is coming to an end, he did launch the
>Ministry of Gender Equality during the first half of this year, with a
>prominent figure from a major women NGO seated as the Minister.
>However, the policies that the Ministry is adopting are those that
>will hardly benefit majority of women suffering at grassroot levels.
>
>This was recently manifested in the revisions that were made to the
>maternity clauses in the Standard Labour Laws in June. The
>Ministry had announced that it will expand public childcare so as to
>decrease the burden on working women. With support from major
>women NGOs [3], the Ministry proposed revisions to maternity-
>related clauses in the Standard Labour Laws, and the clauses were
>changed for the first time since 1953. There were basically two
>major improvements - maternity leave was increased from the
>present 60 days to 90 days, and prohibition on employment of
>women in hazardous workplaces was expanded. This may seem
>like a big step, but the fact of the matter is, these laws came in
>exchange for further flexibility of women's labour. In exchange for
>increase of maternal leave, the Ministry also agreed to abolish the
>clauses restricting overtime work and night work, paid familycare
>leave and menstruation leave.
>
>In a situation where 70% (or perhaps even higher and ever
>increasing) of women workers are irregular workers, how many
>women workers will actually benefit from the revision? The majority
>of working class women are outside legal boundaries. The Ministry
>and women NGOs argue that they will fight for the application of
>the laws to irregular workers, but without questioning the neo-liberal
>characteristics behind the legislation, there is really no chance that
>this will actually take place. Many women activists had fought hard
>for these laws for the last decade and they are congratulating
>themselves in finally achieving their objective, but in the meantime,
>a vast majority of women workers have fallen into the ditches of
>irregular work and the demands of the majority have been
>neglected to benefit a few. Capitalists have learnt to 'sacrifice' a few
>laws for the sake of obtaining further flexibility. Despite the
>argument that these revisions will open new opportunities for
>women, without questioning the essence of Kim's government and
>its support for neo-liberalism, the revisions that were recently made
>will only expedite the flexible usage of women workers and thus
>further deteriorate the working conditions of irregular women
>workers. The Ministry and the NGOs do not realize that the laws,
>along with others that were made during the recent years [4], are
>all in compliance with neo-liberalism.
>
>It has only been one year since the Ministry of Gender Equality
>took off, but those benefiting from it are middle-class, elite women,
>and only the minority of women workers who are lucky enough to
>be in a regular job. The presidential elections take place next year.
>Despite that the Ministry is conforming to neo-liberal policies and
>trying to confuse the workers about the essence of its policies, it
>does have some significance amidst the severely patriarchal
>political scene of Korea - which may well be undermined by any of
>the major right-wing political parties that take office - including the
>ruling New Millenium Democratic Party of Kim Dae-Jung, which still
>receive a lot of support from NGOs. This will merely lead to more
>lack of hope for state-led labour policies.
>
>FIGHTING AND ORGANISING
>Neo-liberalism was not something that hit Korea suddenly in 1997,
>but is a historical development of capitalism that has gradually
>taken form during the last few decades. It had been women
>workers who had felt the effects of globalisation first and thus were
>the first ones to resist. It was the women workers of Korea, who
>fought militantly during the 70s and early 80s for a democratic
>union and worker's rights. Women workers formed the foundation
>for the modern labour movement, although this fact often tends to
>be forgotten. During the late 80's, the Korean economy
>reconstructed itself into focusing on export-oriented heavy
>industries, whose workers were predominantly men, and women
>workers were left behind.
>
>The onslaught of neo-liberal globalisation and the impoverishment
>that came with it was also felt first by women workers. Just after
>the economic crisis, the women worker's movement moved a big
>step forward when independent women's trade unions began to be
>formed [5]. The unions came out of the need to address the
>specific issues of women workers that could not be properly dealt
>with in a general union -organising irregular workers, the
>unemployed, domestic workers and those women who worked in
>small companies where there are no unions. The percentage of
>women participating in unions still remain at a meagre 5%, due to
>the fact that general unions do not accommodate workers who are
>not regular workers. It was only in 1997, when the IMF enforced
>austerity measures and structural adjustment programs also
>affected male workers, that the people's movement in Korea fully
>realised the destructive nature of neo-liberalism. From then on,
>flexibility of labour has become the main target of struggle for the
>working class. Spotlight was finally thrown on the fact that neo-
>liberalism attack women workers foremost, but unfortunately the
>longtime demands and struggles of women workers are being put
>aside, as the struggles against 'irregular labour' is again being
>organised in a male-oriented fashion.
>
>The establishments of these unions are very significant in the
>history of the Korean labour movement and also in the women's
>movement. Just as the strategies of capitalists change, the
>organisation of the working class also much change to resist
>effectively. The essence of neo-liberalism and its gender-bias
>cannot be resisted through the traditional method of organization
>concentrating on male, regular workers from big enterprises.
>
>However, these newly formed women's unions still have further
>developments to make and many obstacles to overcome, in their
>struggles against national and international capital. The unions
>must question the role of neo-liberal globalisation and its strategy
>of incorporating flexibility measures into the labour market, for a full
>understanding of the situation of women workers and organizing of
>more radical struggles that go into the fundamental core. And at
>the same time, the worker's movement of Korea must go through
>structural changes to accommodate the ever increasing irregular
>workers, and must also make more effort into overcoming the
>patriarchal values that are still prevalent inside people's movement.
>Many women activists and unionists have started to address the
>issues of gender discrimination and sexual violence inside the
>people's movement, which up until now had been covered up. Over
>the years, many fervent and militant women activists have had to
>leave the movement because of discrimination and violence. It was
>always considered women's fault, or victimized women were forced
>to 'forgive' for the 'greater cause'. Many women activists, workers
>and unionists are uniting themselves and are calling upon the
>movement to tackle the problem of hierarchy, discrimination and
>violence.
>
>TOWARDS ORGANIZING GLOBAL RESISTANCE OF WOMEN
>As we have seen, neo-liberal globalisation affects all areas of
>society, to attain flexibility of the labour market solely for the
>interests of transnational capital. In the case of Korea, this process
>of enforcing structural adjustment and flexibility has devastated the
>lives of the people, especially women. Capitalist industrialisation
>has brought about the rise of the women's proletariat and neo-
>liberal globalisation has further feminised the proletariat while at the
>same time impoverishing the proletariat into the verge of slavery.
>
>This is not a matter of women merely being affected 'more' - we
>must look at the mechanisms of neo-liberalism that operate in a
>gender-biased way. Indeed, neo-liberal globalisation itself feed upon
>gender discrimination and effectively use traditional patriarchal
>values to exploit women further. Patriarchal ideologies act to crush
>any attempts of women to politicize and form resistance.
>
>However, the essence of neo-liberalism is slowly being manifested
>and women have begun to fight back. Feminisation of labour and
>feminisation of poverty signify increased exploitation of women, but
>precisely because of that, provide the possibility for organization
>and resistance, nationally and internationally. Women must now go
>forth as subjects in uniting the people in our fight against neo-
>liberal globalisation. Instead of being incorporated into a ready-
>made movement of men or middle-class elite women, instead of
>taking the problems of discrimination for granted, women workers,
>farmers, indigenous peoples, migrants and other grassroot peoples
>of the Third World must form a broad solidarity. We must analyse
>globalisation from women's perspective, plan strategies that
>conform with the particular needs of women, propose alternatives
>that include women as equal subjects, keep to the principle of
>internationalism, and unite with other oppressed groups in the
>mass resistance in the fight against neo-liberalism - and go beyond
>in creating a world based on equality.
>
>* Joo-Yeon Jeong & Seung-Min Choi are with the Policy &
>Information Center for International Solidarity (PICIS), Korea. This
>paper was presented at the International South Group Network
>(ISGN) Asian Workshop on Women and Globalisation, 22-24
>November, Manila.
>
>[1] This is merely an 'ideology', because despite the fact that the
>state supports this perspective, in reality many men had lost their
>jobs during the economic crisis and many women are now the sole
>income providers in their families.
>[2] The interesting thing is that government funded institutions
>analysed the same statistics and came up with the percentage of
>27-28%.
>[3] This refers to Korea Women Associations United, an umbrella
>organization of women NGOs. They identify themselves as being
>'progressive' but after Kim Dae-Jung came into power, they
>participated enthusiastically in his policies and have become more
>middle-class oriented than ever.
>[4] In Korea, already a whole series of revisions were made to the
>Standard Labour Laws after the economic crisis, more than any
>other time in Korean history. The illegitimate passage by ruling
>party members of the bill allowing layoffs and the introduction of
>transformational working time system in December of 1997 was
>first in the series that forecasted massive neo-liberal attacks on
>labour. The passage was so explicitly impudent that Korean
>workers went on a massive general strike and militantly struggled
>throughout the winter. Now capitalists are willing to throw a few
>carrots while pushing forth their interests. Then came the maternity-
>related clauses, and now another revision is about to take place
>that will exchange reduction of working hours for more deterioration
>of working conditions.
>[5] Three unions were formed almost at the same time: Korean
>Women's Trade Union, Seoul Women's Trade Union and Seoul
>Regional Women's Trade Union
>
>*************************************************
>
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