I
come to this Globalisation School with a deep sense of urgency, because the war
against terrorism and the developments around the NEPAD make it very urgent for
us to reflect on the implications of the shift to a neoliberal State for women
and gender relations in Africa.
I
also come with a sense of sadness, because the very fact that we have to
discuss about this today means that despite all the international conferences
and resolutions and all our struggles, we are facing even more threats on the
livelihoods of the most resourceless among poor African peoples, that is women.
We are facing an economic fundamentalism that directly affects the fundamental
human rights of African citizens, especially women.
I
am grateful to ILRIG for the opportunity to share with you the evidence from
studies in different African countries which shows that women are
disproportionately affected by the move towards a neoliberal type of State whose
role is centred on advancing the neoliberal economic agenda.
Gender
and the Neoliberal Economic Agenda
The
economic fundamentalism that has been further legitimised by the events of 11
September and the war against terrorism has its own catechism. This catechism is embodied in the neoliberal
policy regime which is described by its proponents as an agenda of
liberalisation and stabilisation.
At
the centre of this agenda is the strengthening of private property and
profit-driven markets, together with what feminists call the ‘marketisation of
governance’ (DAWN, 2000). Under such
marketised governance, the main responsibility of the State is not to ensure
the protection and the realisation of the economic and social rights of its
citizens, but to establish an enabling environment for free trade and foreign
investment as prescribed by the international financial institutions (IFIs) and
imposed through the WTO regime.
In
most African countries, stabilisation measures to reduce budget deficits have resulted
in a decline in shares of expenditures in social services such as health and
education in national budgets since the 80s, as well as a decline in real
expenditure per person. Thus, millions
of poor people have been denied access to social services, while the costs of
providing care have been transferred from the State to communities and
households. It has been well
established that women have paid for these costs, as part of their reproductive
roles.
Typically,
macroeconomic stabilization policies also include fiscal austerity measures
which have led to tighter credit conditions with higher interest rates, and
have worked to make women’s access to formal credit even more difficult and to
reinforce the exclusion of poor women (GERA Programme, 2000).
African
States have embarked on fiscal policy reforms to ensure fiscal discipline, as
part of an enabling environment for investment. There is a widespread tendency to implement regressive taxation
measures, with an overwhelming focus on consumption taxes (such as the VAT),
while taxation on capital is considerably reduced. The poor and the women among them are negatively affected by this
focus on consumption taxes because they are consumers, not capital owners.
As
a result, “the tax and public expenditure economy is being re-subordinated to
the profit-seeking commercial economy in conditions in which families and
communities are less and less able to absorb the shocks” (Keller-Herzog,
1996). This is a basis of major concern
from a gender perspective, as it implies that women who already act as the
major shock-absorbers under restrictive fiscal policies will be
overburdened. Women’s so-called
“reproduction tax” - the burden of providing unpaid care to sustain families
and communities – is being increased, whereas big corporations are subsidised
by governments through tax breaks and other incentives.
Privatisation
is another key element of the neoliberal catechism. It is a policy as well as an organising principle of the
neoliberal State, in the sense that « the main way in which people are
expected to obtain the resources to support human life is via private
production for sale and the purchase of the goods and services they need.»
(Elson 2000: 7) :
Privatisation
per se raises a number of issues from both a development and gender
perspective. First, there is no reason
to believe that the profit-motivated private sector will act in the interests
of the poor and the public at large.
This raises the broader issue of the so-called global public goods, as
goods – or services – whose benefits accrue to all sectors of society and
should therefore be equitably available to all people with equal
opportunity. As such, the provision of
these global public goods by the State is crucial. The issue of global public
goods has important gender dimensions and it is a basis of major concern that
it has disappeared from the international development agenda during the run-up
to the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
Secondly,
many privatization schemes of public utilities in Africa have resulted in
failures in terms of performance and most importantly, in the disconnection of
the poor, including a majority of women, from basic utilities. Water privatisation is a case in point in
many countries and has raised a growing popular protest against the denial of
the right to meet their basic needs to those who do not have the required
purchasing power, i.e. the poor. Women
who are primarily responsible for the provision of water to their families as
part of their reproductive roles are particularly affected.
The
drive of the neoliberal State towards the provision of social services by the
private sector clearly shows a “commodification bias” (Elson, 2001 : 4)
that raises grave concerns from a human rights and gender perspective. This “commodification bias” puts the rights
of the poor and vulnerable groups to meet their basic needs at the mercy of
financial intermediaries. It fuels the
growth of financial corporations and the «corporate welfare State” (Elson,
2001: 11) at the expense of the rights of citizens, especially women.
Indeed,
past experience from liberalization and privatization policies in Africa and
other countries shows that in this context, not only is the hidden reproduction
tax extracted from women increasing, but also “particularly in poor and middle
income families, women are called upon to spend more time and effort in
providing non-market substitutes for marketed goods that their families can no
longer afford to buy, and providing substitutes for public services that are no
longer available” (Elson 2001:3).
In
addition, “commodification/privatization bias fuels the growth of financial
intermediaries; and the growth of financial intermediaries in search of a high
real rate of interest fuels deflationary bias in macroeconomic policy, and
leads to even more pressure to privatize” (Elson, 2001 : 11).
From
a gender perspective, it is also important to identify who is part of ‘the
private sector’ that is targeted by the neoliberal State. In this regard, it should be noted that the
prevailing definition of the private sector exclude the informal sector where
the major part of women’s economic activity is located. In addition, measures to promote the
development of the private sector in Africa included mainly policies directed
at large-scale industries and ignored the small-scale production in which a
majority of women is engaged. As an
example, in Uganda, a GERA Programme study has found that the definition used
by corporations and the World Bank excludes small and micro enterprises, most
of which are run by women (GERA Programme, 2000).
Since
the last WTO Conference in Doha, we have witnessed a process of
re-conceptualisation of development which has been precipitated and
strengthened by the events of 11 September and the establishment of the
international coalition against terrorism.
Trade and investment liberalization has come to mean development in the
mainstream international discourse, and is also a key element of the catechism
of the neoliberal State.
The
studies conducted by the GERA Programme in 8 African countries clearly show
that all this takes place in a context where the existing trade and investment
policies and arrangements are already undermining the livelihoods and the
rights of women and other vulnerable groups.
The studies on the export processing
zones (EPZs) in Madagascar and the footwear industry in South Africa (GERA
Programme, forthcoming) show the same trend towards the feminisation of the
labour force, together with an increasing flexibilisation of work at the
workplace through the use of lean production and other legal devices by
employers. Both studies have not found
a reduction in the gender gap in terms of wages, as women’s wages remain lower
than those of men. In particular, the
South Africa study shows an important erosion in the social wage and women’s
rights as workers, as well as the negative impact on their reproductive
roles. Moreover, the study points to
the fact that workers in the formal
footwear industry suffer from the same level of job insecurity and intensive
working conditions as workers in the informal sector.
The South Africa study also points to the fact that the
pressure on firms to compete in the hostile economic environment created by
globalisation has been a determining factor in the deregulation of the labour
market and the feminisation of the labour force in the footwear industry. In this regard, the case of South Africa
provides a typical example of a low-wage growth strategy that relies on women’s
labour. In this strategy, gender
inequalities in wages and working conditions contribute positively to growth,
which means that export successes and growth come at the expense of gender
equality and women’s rights. Feminist
economists draw attention to the fact that using gender inequality as an
instrument of international competition may result in long-term adverse effects
on the terms of trade of the concerned countries (Cagatay 2001).
The
study also found a growing casualisation and informalisation of work in the
footwear sector. Together with the
changes in production relations, namely the growing number of home-based and
temporary workers – the majority of which are women – and the various forms of
increased pressure on workers within the workplace, the informalisation of work
raises critical issues about the sustainability of women’s livelihoods and
their rights as workers.
This is in a context where trade
liberalisation has reduced import and export taxes, and pressure from mobile
transnational capital has reduced taxation on corporate and capital gains and
income, thereby reducing the fiscal capacity of the State and its ability to
provide for effective safety nets or other forms of social protection. In Madagascar as well as in South Africa,
the GERA studies confirm that trade liberalisation contributes to prevent
governments from devoting sufficient resources to the social protection of
women workers whose cheap labour constitute their « comparative
advantage ». Thus, they also add
to the evidence from other countries of the negative impact of liberalised
taxation policies on social protection for women and vulnerable groups.
In
addition, the South Africa study found that as a result of economic
restructuring in the formal footwear sector, the informal sector has also
undergone significant changes. Among these is the arrival of an important
number of white women in the informal sector that used to be the attribute of
coloured people in the province of Kwazulu-Natal. This re-composition of the informal sector has exacerbated the
vulnerabilities of women workers as a result of intersecting disadvantages
based on gender, class and race. The
study also highlights the fact that in the case of South Africa, the hotly
debated competition between women brought about by globalisation and trade
liberalisation is increasingly between women from the South, rather than
between women from the North and the South.
All
the GERA studies show the negative impact of trade and investment
liberalisation on women’s economic and social rights, especially the erosion of
their livelihoods and socio-economic status.
In particular, women’s subordination and free labour has been abused by
employers and governments to pursue their strategies in the globalised
economy. Women are the most affected by
the rigidities caused by the neoliberal orthodoxy in the global economy.
This
process appears to be greatly faciltated by the role played by States. A cross-cutting issue in all the GERA
studies is that in the context of trade and investment liberalisation, the
patriarchal nature of the State is compounded by an increasing tendency to
prioritise the interests of foreign investors and donors over the rights of
citizens, especially women, as evidenced by current privatisation policies and
the commodification bias in economic policies.
The
GERA research highlights another cross-cutting issue with regards to the role
of the State in relation to the gender dimensions of trade and investment
policy in Africa, which is the multiple disempowerment of African women in the context of international
trading and financial arrangements :
As
an African women and a gender activist, I am therefore deeply concerned that
trade and investement liberalisation is the centerpiece of initiatives such as
the NEPAD which has the ambition of setting the agenda for Africa’s development
for the millennium, and promoting the role of women in all activities. Because the promoters of the NEPAD are
strong believers in the neoliberal catechism and merely reproduce the
neoliberal Washington Consensus under an African dressing, there is very little
doubt that the implementation of the NEPAD will further undermine gender
equality and women’s rights. There is
also reason to be concerned that poor women will be the most adversely affected
by the NEPAD neoliberal policies.
The
GERA research in Africa and other studies at the global level demonstrate that
« neoliberal economic policies have transformed the public policy
environment in ways that are detrimental to women » (Elson,
2000 :15). They have dramatically increased the need for social protection
against market risks, and at the same time reduced the capacity of States to
devote the necessary resources for such social protection system.
However,
it must be recognised that poor women have been discriminated against even
within the constraints of existing resources, and that these constraints
« have been intensified by neoliberal policies, in the name of free
enterprise, efficiency and growth.» (Elson, 2000 :16) Just like gender
relations, « the constraints on the raising and spending of public money
…(…)…are socially constructed constraints» (Elson, 2000 :16).
The
raising and spending of public resources is not a purely economic and technical
exercise, it is also a political process that involves a choice about who will
benefit and who will be excluded. It is
very sad indeed that in the eve of the new millennium, we still have to remind
ourselves that women form the majority of those who are excluded. It is sad that African leaders plan to
implement the neoliberal policies that have deprived this majority of their
full dignity and rights.
In
defining strategies to engage with the neoliberal State, it is critical to
ensure analytical clarity about the issues at stake. A historical perspective is required in order to expose the flaws
in the neoliberal discourse which presents globalisation as an a-historical and
benign process. We must make the point
that globalisation builds on a history of slavery, racism, colonialism,
exploitation and discrimination, especially against women. Therefore, we must use a gendered class
analysis to identify the issues around which we are going to strategise.
The
fight in which we have to engage together is primarily about ideas. It is about neoliberal ideas that deprive us
of our humanity and reduce us to consumers in the « free » global
market. It is about ideas that treat
our labour as an input, on the same footing as machinery or raw materials. It is about ideas that consider women’s
labour as free and infinitely elastic, so that it can be exploited forever to
sustain society in the global village .
In
this fight, it will be critically important to build strategic alliances
between workers and African intellectuals.
These intellectuals have a specific responsibility in providing the
knowledge base for social transformation.
African research must have policy relevance and serve the interests of
the dispossessed and oppressed under globalisation. Research should contribute to progressive and equitable social
transformation.
We
have to forget about collaboration with the neoliberal system. History tells us that this has never
worked. The trade unions in different countries
have experienced more disempowerment in this process, than progress towards the
full realisation of workers’ rights. The market-based growth that the
neoliberal State wants to promote is basically biased against women, because
much of their work is non-market work.
Therefore it is critically important for women workers and organisations
to engage with the neoliberal State and to challenge the hold of patriarchy
that prevents them to have access to the male-dominated public sphere where the
power and resources are mainly located.
We need to unite with other civil society organisations and progressive
forces in order to ensure broad-based support for a different vision of
society. We need to establish a new
social contract by which economic policy making and processes will be
democratised, and the State held accountable for its economic policies.
We
have to re-think our way of organising and go beyond our differences and
national borders to build strategic alliances around our common concerns. More than ever, solidarity is crucial. It is crucial in itself as a value that we
must uphold in order to confront the ideology of profit. It is crucial as a strategy if we want to
capture and influence the State.
REFERENCES
Elson
(D.), Gender Justice, Human Rights and Neo-liberal Economic Policies,
UNRISD 2000.
Elson
(D.), International Financial Architecture : A View from the Kitchen,
Paper for the International Studies Association Annual Conference, Chicago,
February 2001.
Cagatay
(N.), Trade, Gender and Poverty, Background Paper, UNDP, New York,
October 2001.
GERA
Programme, Economic Reforms and Employment in Madagascar : A Gender
Analysis of the Case of Export Processing Zones, forthcoming.
GERA
Programme, Working Women in Leather and Footwear Industries in South Africa:
Finding Responses to the Threats of Globalisation, forthcoming.
Keller-Herzog
(A.), Globalisation and Gender.
Development Perspectives and Interventions, Discussion Paper, CIDA
1996.