The Subordination Of Women And The Internationalization Of Factory Production

Abstract

In the latest phase of the internationalization of capital world market factories represent a relocation of manufacturing of certain kinds of products from the developed countries to the Third World. Large multinational US and European trading and retailing firms based in developed countries and huge Japanese trading firms of South East Asia place large contracts with these factories. Wages of the labor force in world market factories are often 10 times lower than in developed countries while working hours per year are as much as 50% higher. The costs of employing female labor in world market factories are lower than the costs of employing men. Womens wages in world market factories are in general 20-50% lower than wages paid for men in comparable jobs. The lack of social recognition for skills of manual dexterity is not simply a process of gender differentiation rather it is a process of the subordination of women as a gender. Gender ascriptive relations are fundamental in the subordination of women ass a gender and may give women;s subordination a patriarchal form. A major aspect of the gender differentiation of the labor force available in world market factories is womens secondary status in the labor market. Since the industrial revolution wage work has liberated women from gender subordination to a limited extent because of competition between women and men in the labor market. However in the dialectic of capital and gender there is a tendency to intensify the existing forms of gender subordination to decompose existing forms of gender subordination and to decompose new forms of gender subordination. The instability of employment means that pregnancy is often grounds for dismissal or women are dismissed because they can no longer meet productivity or time-keeping norms. In the struggle to improve conditions for women the most important task of sympathetic personnel in national and international state agencies is to facilitate access to resources and afford protection rather than to deliver ready-made womens programs.

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