women are beneficiaries of globalization

7/30/2019 Women are Beneficiaries of Globalization

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By

Melesse Zenebework

Nov.14, 2012


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Women are More Beneficiaries of

Globalization


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Table of Content

Introduction

Areas of Globalization Benefits for Women

Labor Market

Education

Health

Empowerment

Conclusion


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Introduction

Globalization is a system in which global economic, political, cultural andideological dominations are influencing people of the world. Even if the system

more benefits the stronger and weakens the weaker, it still provides a better platform

for the advancement of ideas and technologies.

Gender issue is one of the most sensitive areas often raised in relation toglobalization. Since ensuring the equality of women is one of the ongoing process,

we can only identify the changes and current status of women comparing the past

and the advantages of men at the same time. Several researches and reports from

different individuals and organizations show that globalization is favoring the points

on gender equalities.

Although women do not enjoy the fanciest advantages of globalization in

comparison to men, researches projected that they are becoming beneficiaries in

terms of labor market, education, health and power.


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Labor Market

Globalization has influenced both the quality and quantity of work available for

women. It has increased the number of jobs available and it has altered the nature

of the jobs. Specially in the paid part-time jobs, women more concentrated thanmen.

Foreign Direct investment by MNCs in several developing countries has led to the

creation of Export Processing Zones where women provide up to 80 percent of the

labor force.(ILO,1998, p.142)

In the light manufacturing sector, such as textiles, clothing and footwear, woman

have gained an advance over men because of the lower income wage that they

command.

Male participation rates in the labor force declined between the 1950s and the 1990s

from 93.7 percent to 90.1 percent while womens participation rates rose from 35.9

percent to 47.9 percent. (Tzannatos, 1999, p. 553)


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Labor Market continued..

Sex segregationduring the second half of the 20th century, it has declined and

surprisingly it has declined faster in the developing world so that in the 1990s sex

segregation was less pronounced than in the advanced industrial nations. Indeed, sexsegregation in the industrial Europe was higher than Asia and Africa by both

industry and occupation in the 1990s( Tzannatos, 1999, p.556/557)

Even if it is caused by a sense of sex segregation, the feminization of part-time jobs

were mostly occupied by women in most countries of the developed and developingworld in the 1990s. This played its own role in the distribution of the opportunity for

paid employment. The report showed of the twelve countries which it examines, in

only two- Mexico and Turkeyis the part-time employment rate equal between men

and women, in the other ten countries, women dominate with the UK showing the

highest ratewomen made up 87 percent of part-time workers in 1996 (ILO 1998,p. 142)


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Education

Globalization has influenced the education of women in variety of ways. These five

points are the major ones by their contribution for the advancement of womens

education opportunity.

Globalization became one of the forced which have been undermining the

traditional cultural beliefthat womens education is not important since their place

is in the home.

Brain rather than brawn is the essence of most jobs created by modern globalized

technology. Moreover, employers prefer women as employees because they find

them more adaptable to the demand of a flexible labor market.

The connection between parental education and children's educational achievement

has been known for decades but the evidence linking the mothers education level

to her childrens health is more recent.


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Education continued .

There is an inverse relationship between the level of womens education on one

hand and the size of the their families, as well of child mortality rates, on the other.

In brief, educating women has been shown to be a critical ingredient in breaking thevicious multigenerational cycle of poor child health, low educational performance,

low income, high fertility and poor child health(Todaro, 2000, P.348).

The increasing kind of jobs created by globalization needed the importance of

academic knowledge and performances and these have reduced the gender bias inprofessional careers by promoting images of successful career women in the global

mass media.

International bodies which are part of the globalization process have assisted the

cause of womens education. The UNICEF girls education program in more thanfifty countries attempt to stimulate gender sensitivity in both the contents of the

curricula and the methods of teaching so as to encourage girls enrolment in schools

and close the enrolment gap with boys(Bellamy, 199, P. 56)


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Health

Globalization has also contributed to the wellbeing of womens health condition.

This can be seen in two major aspects which tell the how the health condition of a

human being is well nurtured.

Life Expectancy: according to the UNDPs annual report of the 1999, the life

expectancy of women has more improved than men even if both have shown

positive improvements. It tells only one country has which is the Maldives showed a

higher life expectancy at birth for men than women.

The rate ofinfant mortality is another blunt but equally useful health indicator. As

with life expectancy, the general picture has been one of the steady improvement

over the years. Infant mortality rates declined for girls and in 1992 only one country,

Egypt had higher infant mortality rate than for baby girls than for baby boys- 37.3per thousand live births of baby girls compared to35.3 per thousand baby

boys(UNDP,1995 p.35)


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Gender Empowerment

Empowering women is one of the attribution of globalization that women are

coming these days into the global media and promote gender and equality as one ofthe few powerful ones in the world. Women have lost the power that individuals and

groups have stems from the command that they have over material, social, political

and ideological resources over other individuals and groups in the society.(George V.

Globalization and inequalities.p.132)

Income: even if this has to be viewed within the cultural context of each society,

women having their own income gives them more freedom as well as more power in

the community they live in. it also improves their position in the society.

Education: the advances in education achieved by women in recent decades have

contributed immensely to their empowerment. Education enables women to become

more independent, lifts their status in the society and helps them to influence the

decision making process even in most traditional societies.


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Gender Empowerment continued.

Birth Control: the spread of birth control techniques has enabled women to be more

in control of their reproductive functions. Numerous pregnancies inevitably taketheir toll on the independence and health of the women particularly in the societies

where their status is already low.

Globalization has enhanced the spread of democratic form of government

throughout the whole world. This ,on the other hand, has been a factor of that hascontributed to the rise of womens power. Only a handful of countries today have

either no democratic government election or no enfranchisement for women.

Changes in the legal system concerning gender issues in a country can make a

contribution to womens empowerment. As early as 1947, the General Assembly ofthe United Nations adopted the convention on the elimination of all forms of

discrimination against women. By 1995, 139 countries had all signed it while 41

countries did not sign it 6 signed it with reservations and 43ratified it with

reservations(UNDP, 1995, p. 43)


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Gender Empowerment continued.

The undermining of the traditional genderideology has strengthened the forces of forwomens empowerment. Traditional gender

ideologies consider women as inferior to menand have been used to justify all sorts ofdiscriminatory practices against women.Undermining such ideologies can but help theempowerment of women, even though this maybe seen by some as a form of cultural

imperialism.

These are strong forces making for the increasedempowerment of women. But the process isneither irresistible nor inevitable. When theTaliban gained power in Afghanistan in 1996,

for example, it demanded that women shouldstay at home and closed girls schools(Chinkin,1999, p.308)

Malala, the little girl of the Pakistan is one ofthe current issues

Malala Yousafzai


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Conclusion

Although it is very hard today for women to enjoy better advantages of

globalization than men, it is still obvious that women are gaining improving

benefits comparing to the previous situations.

Todays generation has a completely different attitude and perception towards

women from the generation a decade before. This difference is mostly resulted from

the influence of globalization and global ideologies towards the issue.

The United Nations report and many other research findings are showing that

globalization if benefiting women in terms of education, health which comprises of

life expectancy and infant mortality, power and economic status. In some of the

aspects, they are even more beneficiaries than men and other groups in the society.

women are beneficiaries of globalization

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