Transcript of the Fifth Annual Alternative Mansion House Speech
\u2018Women at Work and at War\u2019
16th June 2004, Institute for Contemporary Arts, London SW1
with Alternative Chancellor Jayati Ghosh

\u201cI am delighted to be here and not just because I have a lot of respect fornef but also
because this is an occasion which most of us dream about. It\u2019s fairly obvious that I\u2019m a
woman from a developing country and we don\u2019t have Chancellors or Finance Ministers who
are women from developing countries. Lets do a thought experiment - not that I\u2019d have to be a
women from a developing country - but that we actually had a Chancellor who would be
interested in the concerns of women and people in developing countries. I mean I know it\u2019s a
bizarre thing to think of but all our Chancellors or our Finance Ministers all over the world tend
to be not just men but men with the interests of large capital in developed countries at heart.
So, lets try and reverse this and imagine what would happen if we actually had a Chancellor
of the Exchequer in Britain or a Finance Minister in one of our countries who actually had the
concerns of people and women in particular in developing countries at heart, what would he
do?

I think the first thing he or she would do is actually tell the truth. Which is something we don\u2019t
often get from our Chancellors. We get a lot of spin on the positive spin on what\u2019s been
happening and we get a lot of positive expectations of what the future is going to bring. But
we don\u2019t get much of the truth. So lets start imagining what this Chancellor, he or she, would
actually tell us if he or she was going to tell us the truth. The first thing that they\u2019d have to
admit is that the world economy is in bad shape. Ok, that\u2019s pretty obvious. It\u2019s not just the
current problems that are emerging. It is the fact that because there\u2019s this domination of
finance, because there\u2019s these capital markets which are not just massively imperfect and
speculative but also generating policies of deflation, policies of government cutback, that the
world economy is really not delivering what it\u2019s supposed to deliver. And it\u2019s not even
delivering, I mean quite apart from the very crucial issues raised that it\u2019s not giving you
greater happiness, a greater well-being in most of the world or in any part of the world. Even
in terms of the things it says it will deliver, greater output, greater employment, it\u2019s not
delivering any of these things either to most of the world\u2019s population. It\u2019s not delivering basic
needs, its not delivering basic services. It\u2019s in bad shape. And further more, that it\u2019s in bad
shape is recognised even by the people who are involved in running it. That in fact we are
hovering on the brink of a crisis.

The second thing that telling the truth would be forced to admit is that imperialism is in bad
shape in the world. It\u2019s still very strong, the US is still out there doing what it wants to do in a
lot of countries, but it\u2019s finding it a much harder. But more than just the military imperialism,
which is in bad shape, the political economy of imperialism is in bad shape. And I think that\u2019s
quite good news for us of course. But it\u2019s not a truth that we\u2019re going to get to hear very much.
Of course the other truth that would have to be revealed is that people across the world are in
bad shape. Most of our countries\u2019 people are in bad shape not just because of increasing
unemployment but because of worsening employment conditions, much more fragile material
conditions. Generally much greater volatility and fluctuations in developing countries - you can
have a crisis that can throw everything out of gear. You have great instabilities not just in
employment and in your wages but often in access to basic goods, often not even due to
policies of your own countries but because of something that happens in a neighbouring
countries or because financial markets suddenly get the sneeze because of some other thing
happening somewhere else. And not only do we have public services declining everywhere
we have more isolation in the North and more desperation in the South. So I think people are
in bad shape.

And finally of course the planet is in bad shape. Again this is not something that we need
telling in this audience. I think everyone knows that we are on unsustainable growth
trajectories or non-growth trajectories. But I think what is perhaps not realised is the extent to
which stagnation in the South in developing countries is accompanied by totally unsustainable

forms of production. So it\u2019s not even as if its growth which is giving you this lack of
sustainability. It\u2019s stagnation, it\u2019s depression, it\u2019s deflation, which is giving you this complete
attack on our planet and on our resources.

So, within that, the reason I have chosen to talk specifically about women is because what is
happening to women across the world and especially in developing countries in the recent
past is a kind of mirror. I mean of course it\u2019s a mirror - we\u2019re half the world and all that. But the
experience of women encapsulates a lot of these tendencies very, very dramatically. We\u2019ve
actually had huge, seismic shifts in the lives of women, especially in developing countries,
especially in developing Asia in the last ten or fifteen years. We\u2019ve had massive shifts in and
out of the paid work place. And this is something which I think is perhaps not adequately
recognised. There\u2019s this perception that in the South there are all these jobs that are moving
in. Manufacturing jobs, export oriented jobs that women are getting. And out-sourcing jobs \u2013
service sector jobs that a lot of women are getting because of this shift from North to South. I
think there are two things we have to note here. There isn\u2019t a shift. Jobs are being lost
everywhere. Net there are less jobs \u2013 for men and women in developing countries - than
there were. Trans national corporations are net destroyers of jobs.

So, it\u2019s not a question of the jobs shifting, they\u2019re disappearing. And turning into much more
fragile, insecure forms of employment. Which I will come to. But what we\u2019ve observed in
developing Asia within the space of less than a generation \u2013 fifteen, twenty years, is a huge
shift into paid work. That is a massive increase in women\u2019s paid workforce participation. From
twenty two per cent up to as much as 50 per cent in some of these East Asian countries.
Doubling the number of women who are in paid employment. For a brief period, very short
period, suddenly. And you can imagine the kinds of changes this has on societies. Suddenly
you have double the number of women working or half of the women around in that particular
age group working in export-oriented industries. And just as quickly you find that they\u2019re out.
And they\u2019re out because capital moves to cheaper locations. Or capital finds other
technologies that can do it because no matter how cheap labour is, it\u2019s even cheaper to do
without the labour. And you have therefore a shift out of manufacturing employment in Asia,
except for China. In Asia, manufacturing employment for women has been falling now for ten
years. Well before the East Asian crisis we had a de-feminisation in export oriented
manufacturing employment. So, what\u2019s the big news then?

The big news was services. It still is services. At least if you read the papers here in England
or in Holland where I have been last week, you actually get the impression that there\u2019s this
huge movement of jobs, service sector jobs. And women are doing a whole lot of this. You
know call centres, business processing, outsourcing, publishing. It\u2019s all been taken over by
these women in developing countries, and so on. When you go out there and you realise, yes,
there are some jobs being created. Which, by the way are ghastly jobs. It\u2019s really a classic
example of alienated labour. The call centre job is probably one of the worst jobs, I can
compare it only to one of a truck driver. It\u2019s probably one of the worst jobs in existence today.
It is heavily monitored, highly pressured, very, very strong and intense pressure throughout
work time, which is a very weird work time. You get a 12-hour shift, which can be any time of
the night or day and it\u2019s a job that involves so much attention that we get very high burnout.
We are already observing that children who take it on at the age of eighteen or twenty are
unable to carry on after twenty-two. Aside from which there are extraordinary cultural shifts
associated with this. You have young women and men in Hariana, a state in India, who are
put through courses, which teach them the American accent and tell them to say that they are
Sadie from Kansas City or whatever, so that they can meet the requirements of this call
centre. And you have this extraordinary shift, this increase in this kind of employment, which
is not attractive employment. The reason the wages are so much higher than other wages,
even in urban India, is because it\u2019s a horrible job, as I\u2019ve mentioned. But still, service sector
employment, even in India, is coming down. Still service sector employment, in that kind of
semi-formal activity, throughout Asia is coming down. Because we\u2019re losing other kinds of
jobs.

So, what\u2019s really happening is a massive shift of all types of employment towards insecure, part-time, piece-rate jobs. This is happening in South Korea, it\u2019s happening in Malaysia. It\u2019s happening in India. It\u2019s happening of course in Brazil and everywhere in Latin America. What

we\u2019re getting is manufacturing, say, Adidas or Nike, or Benetton. We get multi-national
companies without factories who basically operate a very complex chain of outsourcing,
where they do the centralised design and then farm out all other activities, they even
franchise the marketing. And you get situations where there is outsourcing down to the home-
based work. And its piece-rate work, so there is no monitoring of work conditions of any kind,
there is no worker protection, because you are on your own, you are doing it for yourself and
you\u2019re a self-employed person. There is a huge increase in this kind of outsourced, very, very
basic activity. Which really means it is much more fragile, because a piece-rate contract
means that it is seasonal. You have no assurance that you will get continuous employment
through the year. Your wage rates are abysmal. There\u2019s a huge capacity for intense self-
exploitation of your own work \u2013 because you really have to ensure that you can maintain that
minimum that you need for the wage, for your own survival. And there is in fact no possibility
of getting together, of association, of unionisation, of fighting for your rights in that sense.
Because you are all dealing individually with these middlemen. I say middlemen because they
are all men, in fact.

Anyway, we\u2019ve had therefore this huge shift, coming in and out of the paid workforce. Staying
in the paid workforce, but not recognised as such. Being in what is called self-employment,
which is really a refuge sector for a whole lot of massive continued exploitation.

And then you have the other big shift. Which is that women increasingly are victims of war,
and not just in developing countries. There is of course, the direct war; there is the direct
imperialist war that we know is going on in Afghanistan, in Iraq. And which we know
oppresses women more than anyone else. Even though they are often fought in the name of
liberating women, we find that these wars have actually increased the physical insecurity of
women, increased the burden of their work, increased the burden of their unpaid labour and
given them much, much more fragile and volatile societies in which to live. In which the
emerging alternatives to this imperialism are in fact deeply evangelist, religious, patriarchal
tendencies that are probably going to end up oppressing them more.

So we know that women are the victims of overt, physical war. But women are increasingly
the victims of an economic war, which we don\u2019t recognise adequately. And we are the victims,
not just us, men and women across the world are victims of an economic war which is taking
away our basic social and economic rights to the point where we no longer recognise that we
have them. Across Asia today, even in the poorest village, you\u2019ll find bottled water. Why?
Because citizens have stopped expecting that governments can provide clean drinking water.
We have stopped expecting that we will get the most basic public service. We have stopped
expecting that we will get the most minimal care facility and that we will have to pay for it. And
if we can\u2019t pay for it we don\u2019t get it. So, in other words, across the world there has been a
story of government\u2019s reneging on their responsibilities. Giving up what they are supposed to
be doing and not providing basic social and economic rights. We don\u2019t fight for them because
we do not even remember that they are our rights. We don\u2019t even remember that
governments are supposed to give us minimal health care, minimal education, minimal, I\u2019m
not even talking about the high level stuff, minimal food security, minimal sanitation, minimal
physical infrastructure. And so, because of this massive decline in public goods and services
we have two tendencies. We have a big increase in unpaid labour, when hospitals cut down
on their services people have to be looked after at home or if there is no nursing available
somebody has to go and nurse that person in the hospital. And typically, unpaid labour is
performed by women - not solely but it is dominantly performed by women. There are
estimates which say 65 per cent of it world wide is performed by women, but never mind.

The point is that people in general have to perform this unpaid labour. Where schools are
closed or where they are not providing adequate facilities, girl children typically don\u2019t get to
go. Across a lot of Asia, in fact, there are children, girl children who don\u2019t go to school
because there are no public toilets for girls; there is only one toilet which is taken over by the
boys. So, the girls simply don\u2019t go to school. Simple as that. Across the region, there is a
decline in basic sanitation. And when that happens, it is the women of the household who are
responsible, if you like for all that social reproduction, who have to go and deal with the
consequences. In rural parts of Asia, they have to walk longer to collect water, or to collect
fuel wood. In urban parts of the country they have to wait longer for the taps, which run for