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Gender and Globalization – How is gender shaped by the

globalization process?
How is gender shaped by the process of globalization? How works globalization for men and
women? Is there one gender category that benefits more?

In this paper, I will try to answer to these questions. I will take the globalization process
with some of its parts and try to talk about how them influence gender.

Globalization is a complex process. We can talk about economic, political, cultural and
geographic globalization and how all the ideas, people, discourses, organizations have taken on a
global or transnational form. All of these are shaping the gender evolution, the gender roles and
the gender relations.

When I think about economic globalization, I think at the role of World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund and the interaction of economies through trade, production and
financial transaction. In this paper, I’ll try to show how economic globalization works for men and
women. I chose to put the accent on this part of the globalization because I’m interested in the
evolution of the labor force in relation with gender. I will also mention the links between political
and cultural globalization and gender.

For women, the economic globalization has generated new jobs in “export-processing, free
trade zones, and world market factories” (Moghadam, 1999). In that case many women from
developing countries have learn “to earn and control income and to break away from the hold of
patriarchal structures, including household and familial relation”. That could be the good part of
the process but, of course, there’s a bad one too. The work that’s available to women is badly paid,
or insecure and because of this the unemployment rates are higher for women than men in some
countries (ibidem).

In most of the countries the gender gap in unemployment rates is small but in others there’s
a big difference between men and women from this point of view. In Table 1 the unemployment
rate is measured as female minus male. We can see easily the differences. Spain is the country
with the biggest gap between men and women, female unemployment rate is 11,9 above the male
(Azmat, Guell, Manning, 2006).
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Country Male Female Difference

Spain 11 22.91 11.91
Greece 7.56 17.92 10.36
Italy 8.67 15.71 7.04
France 9.66 12.96 3.3
United Kindom 6.75 5.07 -1.68
Netherlands 2.74 4.49 1.75
Luxembourg 1.77 2.68 0.91
Germany 8.15 9.22 1.07
Denmark 4.69 6.54 1.85
Portugal 3.84 5.05 1.21
Finland 9.58 10.73 1.15
Switzerland 2.52 3.68 1.16
Japan 4.82 4.46 -0.36
Sweden 7.5 6.76 -0.74
United States 4.05 4.33 0.28
Austria 3.69 3.85 0.16
Australia 7.13 6.64 -0.49
Canada 7.78 7.25 -0.53
New Zealand 6.94 6.58 -0.36
Norway 3.36 3.05 -0.31
Ireland 5.9 5.5 -0.4 Table 1. Gender gap in unemployment rates

Source-—OECD Labour Market Statistics (OECD Statistical Compendium [Paris: OECD, 1999]).

In 2012 the employment rate for European Union was 69,6% for men in contrast to 58,5%
for women. In an article wrote by Cătălina Ivănuș (2014) she mentioned that from 2002 to 2012
the employment rate for women has increased but it always remained lower than the employment
rate for men. That happened because the household tasks take more time for women than men.

I think women are still disadvantaged in the new labor markets. From the beginning the
female labor was cheaper than the male labor. In most countries “women earn 75 percent of men’s
wages, with Sweden, Sri Lanka and Vietnam at upper and more egalitarian end (90 percent), and
Bangladesh, Chile, China, Cyprus, South Korea, the Philippines and Syria at the lower and more
unequal end (43-61 percent)”. In countries like Ecuador or Jamaica, women earn less than men
even they have higher qualifications. Another example to support my argument is that in some
sectors, like information processing sectors, the most of high-skilled jobs are dedicated to men and
the low-skilled ones go to the female workers (Moghadam, 1999).
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It's easy to see that the moment when women have entered the labor market has coincided
with the political mobilization of women and the expansion of women’s organization. Also, we
can see how women are beginning to be part of the politics, even if their number is much smaller
than the men’s. In 2005 the world average of women in parliaments was 16%. Divided in regions,
The Nordic Countries were the ones with the highest average (39,9%) followed by 18,8% in
America, 17% in Europe, 16,5% in Sub-Saharan Africa, 15,2% in Asia, 11,5% in Pacific and 8,2%
in Arab States (Dahlerup, 2006).

Yvone Galligan (2014) observes how the proportion of women in Devolved Assemblies
has changed since 1998 to 2012. The percentage of women has increased from 1998, but not in a
linear way. She made the analysis on Assembly of Wales, Scottish Parliament, Northern Ireland
Assembly and London Assembly. The only one where we can see a linear increase is Northern
Ireland Assembly but the proportion remain relatively small, in 1998 there were 13% women and
in 2012 19%. The three other ones have bigger proportion of women, especially in the period 2003-
2004, when the percentage of women in Assembly of Wales was 50%, 40% for Scottish Parliament
and 36% for London Assembly. The author observes also differences by gender in the Local
Council of Northern Ireland from 1989 to 2011. The percentage of women increased linear year
by year but it remains under 25%. It increased from 4% in 1989 to 22% in 2011. We can see an
evolution but we can’t talk about equalities.

Regarding the cultural part of globalization, we tend to think at standardization as

“McDonaldization” but we can see also how some nations are trying to keep their own culture
alive and at the same time they are trying to be part of the global world. For me a good example
in this regard is the Muslim world. Zayn Kassam (2011) observes how “many Muslim women are
today caught in a bind”: on the one hand, there are many movements to liberalize women’s access
to economy, education, equitability under the law etc. But if we look at the other part they are still
seen as a cause of panic in Western nations. For instance, in France we can see “the barring of the
veil in schools” because for many people that could be seen as threatening, even if it can just be
“an attempt at acculturation to the host culture”. In that case, I think the Muslim women are trying
to show that they can wear their veil and they don’t have to give up being Muslim in order to
become productive citizens of the new countries. For the outsiders, this can be seen either as a
tradition that is too important to give up, either as a symbol of women oppression.
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With globalization, we can see an increase in the number of women’s movements and the
ties between militants in different countries. Now there are many transnational feminist networks.
A good example in this case are Women in Development Europe (WIDE), based in Brussels,
consisting of 12 countries. This network has been found in 1985 and its focus is on the global
economy, “with a feminist critique of economic theory and of European and U.S. trade and foreign
aid policies” (Moghadam, 1999). Another example can be Development Alternatives with Women
for a New Era (DAWN) which was also formed in 1985. This network has focused on economic
policy and reproductive rights and population policy.

If I should pick one gender category that benefits most from globalization I would not be
very sure about my choice. On one hand, I think it helped women to grow with openness of the
labor market and the big development of most of the domains, their increase in politics etc. On the
other hand, we can see process of globalization also as a minus for women because they are still
disadvantaged in front of men from many points of view. They earn less than men, they have
lower-skilled jobs comparing to men, they occupy a very small number in politics etc. We can say
that women have beneficiated from the process of globalization because now they have more than
before, but we still cannot talk about equality between male and female at least in economy or
politics. Regarding the cultural part I think women are also traditionally more constrained than
men, the latter ones having more freedom in their choices.
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References:

1. Azmat. Ghazala, Guell. Maia, Manning. Alan. (2006). Gender Gaps in Unemployment
Rates in OECD Countries in NORC at University of Chicago, 24, 1-37.
2. Dahlerup. Drude. (2006). Women, Quotas and Politics, New York: Routledge
3. Galligan. Yvonne (2014). Women in Politics. Knowledge Exchange Seminar Series,
Governance/Assembly review, 20 March 2014, Northern Ireland
4. Ivănuș, Cătălina-Adriana (2014). Inegalități de gen pe piața muncii din UE. Economie și
Sociologie. Revistă Teoretico-Științifică. 2/2014, 132 – 139.
5. Kassam. Zayn. (2012) The Challenges of Globalization for Muslim Women in Briggs,
Sheila & McClintock Fulkerson, Mary (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theology.
Oxford: Oxford University Press,
6. Moghadam. M. Valentine. (1999). Gender and Globalization:Female Labor and Women’s
Mobilization in Journal of world – System research, 5, 366-389.