Trade-related employment for women In industry and services In developing countries

Abstract

"The purpose of this paper is to inform the work of the UNRISD/UNDP project Technical Co-operation and Women s Lives: Integrating Gender into Development Policy . It describes contemporary changes in the international economic context as they affect the evolution of employment structures, and attempts to analyse how women s labour market prospects in developing countries are being affected.1 The paper helps to illuminate the broad parameters for the five national studies being prepared for the project and aims to provide a basis for comparison between them in terms of their relation to the evolving world economy. One of the premises of the argument of this paper is the idea that developments in the international economy, i.e., the scale and pattern of international economic transactions and the forces driving them, are having a determining influence on the prosperity of developing economies and on income earning possibilities for their citizens. The relevance, and excitement, of these developments from a gender perspective is that the process manifestly does not preclude the participation of women as economic agents: indeed, women are centrally involved, and their involvement is crucial to a country s prospects of economic growth. The fundamental question that forms the background to policy discussions in this area is whether this participation is equitable or exploitative of women. Are the terms on which women are involved in such activity inegalitarian, as in other spheres of economic and social life? Do the quantity and quality of female employment in trade-related activity present an avenue for the improvement of women s economic position? This paper addresses this question without claiming to be able to answer it definitively, given the poor state of the necessary data by reference to trade-related developments in different economic sectors and to differences in countries experiences of trade and industrialization.2 The paper first sets out what is known about the relation between different types of industrialization and female employment in the light of evolution in regulatory arrangements for world trade, and, secondly, raises a new issue: the significance, in relation to female employment, of the rapid expansion in international transactions in services."(pg 1)