Accra 2004

World Alliance of Reformed Churches

Women "missing" the world

Reformed World Globalization through a gender lens
Evangeline Anderson-Rajkumar
volume 51 number 4
(December 2001) In this paper, I focus on some of the ways in
Gender perspectives which, directly or indirectly, globalization
on the Accra theme impacts the everyday lives of women in India
and other Asian countries. The ruthless game of
Introduction
globalization can only go on at the cost of the
Women and the flesh and blood of ordinary people: the
language of life vulnerable are offered on its altar. People
Life in abundance: a (women and men) do not hesitate to use
Caribbean perspective members of their own kind, so long as faces
Unsettling the Christian remain invisible, in support of their own
church interests. For a patriarchal, capitalist,
consumerist, globalized society, the lives of
Wholeness of life: women and children become expendable.
becoming human in a
new community The impact of globalization on women in
Women "missing" the informal sectors
world: globalization The emergence of a global market, with its
through a gender lens associated policies of privatization,
Contributors "stabilization", and liberalization, has led to the
setting up of smaller new industries with highly
flexible organization and simple infrastructure in
Accra 2004 developing countries. Closely related to this
Home "informalization" 1 of work is the feminization of
work. Labour-intensive industries move to
Contact us developing countries where women are the
preferred labour force, because they can be
hired at a low wage. Jobs become available for
women, but only as unorganized labourers with
no right to form unions or fight for their basic
rights: the situation of women working in the
garment industry is a case in point. Low-skilled
jobs with low wages, long hours of work and
lack of job security are typical of the
feminization of labour in unorganized sectors.
The state generally supports the management
and ignores any violation of the labour laws.
It is clear that the women are being exploited,
but they may not raise their voices - not even
against the sexual harassment they may face in
the work place.
Globalization, women and land
Similar changes have taken place in Third World
agriculture. With the green revolution and the
indiscriminate use of new technology, the earth
is exploited and women are also marginalized.2
The use of chemical fertilizers to increase the
yield eventually leads to the exhaustion of the
earth; women's knowledge of traditional
agriculture and seed cultivation is supplanted
by technological advice given by the
government. Vimochana analyses these
connections in a most helpful way:
"When a girl child is killed in Usilampatti, a
furore is raised about the ignorance and
poverty of the people that leads to this crime.
What is never revealed is that this is happening
in a community that has traditionally valued the
woman as a repository of knowledge related to
agricultural practices and seed cultivation who
therefore was seen as an asset and never as a
liability. What will never be spoken about is that
with the advent of the green revolution, and the
dominance of the cash-crop economy, this
knowledge has become redundant and with it
the women."3
This helps us to see women not only as
interconnected with the earth but also as those
who hold the hope for the goodness of the
earth. Women's orientation to a need-based
economy and eco-friendly approach stands
opposed to the profit-based approach of the
dominant models of development.
A related issue is intellectual property rights:
new varieties of seed cannot be used without
royalty payments to those who have patented
them. Vandana Shiva has written in detail about
how our farmers cannot store seed as before,
but have to buy seed at a huge price from
oppressive companies.
Any discussion of the relationship between
women and the earth in India must take place
against a backdrop where:
"Agriculture contributes just over 30 per cent of
GNP and accounts for 60 per cent of
employment. Nearly 63 per cent of all
economically active men are engaged in
agriculture, compared to 78 per cent of women.
In the three rice-growing states of Kerala, Tamil
Nadu and West Bengal, women provide more
than 2/3 of the inputs including transplanting,
weeding, manuring and fertilizing, harvesting,
threshing, winnowing, drying, stacking and
carrying produce. In the tribal economy of
Orissa, women spent 105.4 hours per year on
shifting cultivation compared with 50.11 by the
men. In the Himalayas, a research study found
that where a pair of bullocks works 1,064 hours
and a man for 1,212 hours a year, a woman
works 3,485 hours a year on a one-hectare
farm. A woman on an average works for 640
hours for agricultural operations like weeding,
384 hours for irrigation, 650 hours for
transporting manure, 557 hours for sowing, 984
hours for threshing and harvesting."4
Women's double burden - working long hours in
the field as well as attending to household
chores like cooking and collecting water and
fuel for the day - is often taken for granted.
Land, dowry, reproductive technologies
According to S Krishnaswamy, "there is hardly
any evidence of female infanticide in India prior
to the coming of the British".5 What then was
the role of the colonialists?
"The establishment of British rule brought an
end to internecine warfare as well as to external
invasions but exacerbated land hunger even
more. The most important and far-reaching of
the changes introduced by the British involved
imposing changes in land ownership patterns.
Cultivators now ended up as tenants of a much
more interventionist and rapacious state. While
creating these new tenancy rights, women's
rights in the land were disregarded and
bypassed. Even among communities where
women were the primary workers on the land,
in the process of converting communal property
rights of the clan into individual property rights,
women were almost completely excluded.
Labour power is more valued in societies with
surplus land and scarce labour. As land
becomes scarce and population pressure
increases, a woman's labour power loses its
value and possession of land becomes the all-
important asset."6
Several scholars emphasize the links between
female infanticide, the practice of giving a
dowry, the devaluation of females and the
alienation of land, women's labour, etc.
Krishnaswamy adds hypergamous marriages to
the list of reasons for the practice of female
infanticide. These marriages prevented the
woman from marrying a person of lower social
standing, and led to the giving of large dowries
because the economic value of the female was
lowered. Another reason for female infanticide
was the superstitious belief that if you kill a
female child, the next one is sure to be a
male.7
Bina Agarwal highlights the link between
poverty, dowry and female infanticide. She
says:
"Among the poor, since female labour
participation is typically higher and dowry
incidence lower than among well-to-do
households, we would expect anti-female bias
to be lower. But if underemployment among the
poor women is high, so that their realized
contribution to the household income is low...
or cultural factors in the region make for strong
son-preference and high dowry among all
classes, then despite more women entering the
labour force, there would be a stronger bias
against girls under poverty conditions."8
Women are under tremendous pressure to give
birth to male babies. In most cases reported,
they are named as the murderers of female
children. It is either the mother-in-law or the
mother or the midwife who commits the
murder. We need to ask whether these women
are violators or victims. Even though it is the
father who determines the sex of a child, the
mother is condemned as unable to give birth to
a son. The unwanted female babies who are
killed at birth are referred to as kuzhipappa.
Between 1978 and 1982, there were about
78,000 cases of post-amniocentesis female
foeticides in India. Advertisements such as "Pay
Rs. 500 now and save Rs. Five lakh (500,000)
later" played on the anxieties of parents in
states like Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat. Nearly
all of the 15,914 abortions during 1984-85 at a
well-known abortion clinic in Bombay were
undertaken after sex-determination tests
indicated that the foetus was female.9 In Tamil
Nadu, a scheme was developed in the early 90s
where parents could dump unwanted female
children at certain hospital locations and the
government would take care of them. It is
possible to see this as a temporary measure to
curb the practice of female infanticide, but it is
important to critically review the role of the
government in assuming the responsibility of
"parenting" the child, instead of raising social
awareness of gender issues.
The violence of female infanticide, like any
other violence against women, is rooted in
patriarchy. Those who control the woman's
body appropriate the material benefits. Every
aspect of a woman's body, sexuality and
reproductive rights is reduced to a commodity,
completely devaluating her.
The 2001 census shows a sharp decline in the
gender ratio in the 0-6 age group in several
states. In Punjab, the ratio of females to males
has come down from 875:1,000 to 793:1,000;
in Haryana, from 879 to 820; in Himachal
Pradesh, from 951 to 897.
The census commissioner observes on page 96
of his report that "Migration cannot explain this
phenomenon which must be the consequence of
female foeticide on a massive scale if not
female infanticide and higher female child
mortality rates... One thing is clear - the
imbalance that has set in at this early age
group is difficult to be removed and would
remain to haunt the population for a long time
to come. To say the least, demographically, the
sex ratio of 927:1,000 of the population in the
age group 0-6 does not appear to augur well for
the future of the country."10
Women migrant workers
Many women from Kerala are in the Middle East
today, working to earn their living and support
their families back home. Perhaps they are also
saving money for their dowry and marriage.
The status of these migrant workers is always
precarious, since they do not have a right to
voice their protest or organize themselves into
a union. In exchange for a "well-paid" job and
the economic independence and security that
comes from it, some are persuaded to say that
they do not mind the sense of alienation or lack
of human rights.
A related issue is the female work force from
Asia (especially from the Philippines, Nepal,
India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) who
work as domestic help in rich homes in
Singapore, Malaysia and other Asian countries.
Globalization offers these women opportunities
of work outside their homes, but at the price of
surrendering their human rights.
We should also note the issue of mail-order
brides in the Philippines. European men are told
that if they choose Asian wives, they will get
humble, obedient, good housewives compared
to their own women who are "liberated" and
won't listen to them. Numerous women from
the Philippines respond to the advertisements
for mail-order brides and are willing to travel
and settle in another country, uprooted from
their cultures and traditions. There is very little
one can do to redeem women from such
situations as their passports are usually taken
away from them on arrival in the strange land.
Globalization promises to open the "gateway to
heaven" in terms of opportunities, availability of
labour across boundaries and building one true
world. However, what happens is that a
majority of communities and families in the
Third World get fragmented so that an exclusive
minority may live as citizens of one globalized
world.
Women's movements
Women have come together in local networks
as well as networks of solidarity with
movements across the globe. The Women in
Black movement in the Plaza de Mayo,
Argentina - demanding that the government
take responsibility for sons/fathers/husbands
who were "disappeared" during the military
dictatorship's "dirty war" against the people in
the 1970s and 80s - is connected to the Naga
Mother's Union and the Women in Black
movement in Bangalore. Following the
demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992,
and India's detonation of two nuclear devices in
1998, women and men across the globe held
out their hands in support to fight the evils of
communalism and hatred in society. Narmada
Bachao Andolan brings together women from all
walks of life, in India and outside, to fight
against dominant models of development and
culture. Women's movements also mobilize
worldwide support on issues of ecology and
justice and create a platform to promote
women's shared knowledge and wisdom about
sustainable development.
Militarization and sexual slavery
The world "lives" and "dies" by guns. Those who
live by the arms industry and the arms trade do
not belong to the poverty-stricken world. Those
who die are not usually from the developed
world. Wars impact on women's lives in two
ways: the increase in single-parent families,
with more men dying in wars, leaving the task
of sustaining life to their wives; and the grave
crime of using rape as a weapon in war. The
horrid tales of rape are overlooked by
governments, who choose not to see the
women's lifelong scars of shame and
humiliation as one of the high costs of war. This
is the case for women in Bosnia Herzegovina
and Palestine, or Sri Lankan women during the
presence of the Indian Peace-Keeping Force
(IPKF), or women in north-east India who
suffered from atrocities committed by the
Indian army. The women are raped but not
killed, so that they live to tell the tale of
tragedy to future generations.
Sexual slavery under military occupation was
named as an issue by the "comfort women" in
Korea only in recent times. Several thousand
women who were brutally abducted to serve as
sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during the
second world war, but survived, found the
courage to speak of the violence done to them
after over forty years of silent suffering. When
viewed through a patriarchal lens, militarization
and sexual slavery may be "justified" or
legitimized. When viewed through a gender
lens, they reveal the pain and humiliation of
women all over the world.
Sex trafficking of women
Prostitution is often glossed over as a non-
issue. We are told complacently that it is "the
oldest profession in the world". Regular sex
tours are organized by agents from across
Europe to certain countries in Asia, like
Thailand, with promises of indiscriminate sex
made readily available at a price. One of the
major sources of income for the Thai
government is the sex tourism industry. Many
women who opt for sex work often pretend to
thrive economically and thus woo other women
to join them to "reap the fruits" of globalization.
The number of women who fall victim to
HIV/Aids has reached astronomical figures and
their deaths are increasingly reported. Many
men succumb to the superstition that if an
HIV/Aids-affected man has sex with a virgin
then he will get rid of the disease. It is pathetic
to watch children caught up in this spiral of
violence.
One way of looking at this issue is in terms of a
global consumerist culture that systematically
converts wants into needs, and pushes an
otherwise simple society to become
consumerist because of the understanding that
"you are what you have", "you are what you
wear", which defines the values and ethics of
globalization.
Beauty pageants and globalization
Patriarchy introduces new enemies within one's
own territory using definitions of ideal
femininity/womanliness. Women are asked to
compare their beauty with one another: "Mirror,
mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them
all?" Indian women, for whom the beauty
pageant was once an alien concept, are today
successfully drawn into the globalized capitalist
system, which convinces them that it is a
matter of freedom and choice and not a gender
issue. Such is the power of patriarchy that
anyone who recognizes the face of the demon
and attempts to exorcize it, calling it by name,
risks being condemned as a deviant, destructive
element in society.
A woman is identified in terms of her body.
Globalization and its impact through the media
have defined the ideal body of a "universal" and
a "world" woman in India. One of the
characteristics of globalization is fragmentation.
The cosmetic industry will be helped only if the
beauty of a woman is fragmented into her hair,
teeth, skin, toe-nails etc. The concept of beauty
is standardized as slim, tall, fair, blonde, blue-
eyed, etc. An ideal feminine body is defined in
terms of its slender shape. "Beauty can never
be celebrated by the new global culture. It can
only be vulgarized."11
Global watchers and feminist critics say that
there is a direct link between the 1991
announcement by the then finance minister,
Manmohan Singh, that India would open its
markets to the outside world and the victories
of Aishwarya Rai as Miss World and Sushmita
Sen as Miss Universe in 1994. The two beauty
queens were indeed the ambassadors to
welcome the giants of the global economy to
India. If there were only five cosmetics
products to choose from before the opening,
suddenly there was an influx of cosmetics
companies. The excise on cosmetics was
lowered from 120 per cent to 40 per cent in
three years, while the tariffs on water,
electricity and fuel shot up. Women in the
villages were also searching for "fair, ever fair
and lovely". The craving for "whiteness"
became an obsession.
The newspapers and other marriage bureaux
also reveal the discriminatory gender slant in
announcing the need for a bride or a groom. A
girl who is "fair" in complexion stands more to
gain than one who is "dark". Advertisements for
cosmetics also promise the buyer that constant
use of certain cosmetics would make the
women look "fair and lovely". Thus there is a
practice of apartheid of a different kind within
Indian society where white/fair skin is
celebrated, preferred against the dark/black
skin. There is no formal law (yet) that punishes
those guilty of discrimination based on skin
colour.
In the United States, this commodification of
the woman's body extends to children as well.
"The little girls strut their stuff in lipstick and
tight dresses, even pull out their baby teeth to
win big bucks and fame... Eating disorders and
depression - particularly if the girls don't grow
up to be beauties - are among the most
common ailments that plague pre-teen pageant
contestants... There are some 500 pre-teen
pageants a year in the United States and some
of the bigger state-wide contests pay out over a
million dollars in prizes".12 The unethical values
connected with this commodification of the
body are clear in the case of young Jon Benet
Ramsey, a "Little Miss Colorado", who was
murdered after sexual assault. She was six
years old!
Nelia Sancho of the Philippines, who was
crowned as beauty queen of Asia-Pacific a few
years ago, has words of pain and caution to all
women:
"After being crowned "Queen of the Pacific" in
an international beauty contest held in
Australia, I was thrown into a dizzying world of
travel and excitement. But also of drudgery and
humiliation. As I went from one place to
another and met different kinds of people, it
became more and more evident that people
only expected me to smile and look pretty;
nobody expected me to have any intelligence at
all, and after the preliminary greetings, nobody
tried to have any sort of intelligent conversation
with me. That was when I began to see that
people saw me as nothing more than a pretty
object to beautify a room or add atmosphere to
a gathering or event. The most eye-opening
experience of all is the way in which I had to
promote one product after another which made
me start to question the whole woman-product
equation. After my reign, I began to more fully
study the link between the market economy
and the profit motive behind beauty pageants
with the objectification of women. Women in a
global market economy set-up are just another
commodity to be bought and sold at a price."13
Today, Nelia is one of the prominent voices
calling women to challenge these forces of
exploitation.
"Missing" the world
Women have "missed" the world - not just as
"Miss" Universe, "Miss" World or "Miss" Asia
Pacific, but by being robbed of their right to live
as full human beings. Each time there is
negotiation for dowry, it is the complete
devaluation of a woman in the marriage
market. Male brutality and greed perpetuated
through the dowry system, landlessness and
powerlessness, the reproductive technologies'
hunt for female foetuses, a false sense of
beauty and satisfaction - all these have made
women miss the world, denying them their
rightful opportunity to live complete human
lives.
This is the theme that ties together our
reflections. If we define poverty not as "lack of
income" nor in terms of one's daily calorie
intake, but in the broader perspective of the
Human Development Report 1997, then poverty
is "the denial of opportunities and choices most
basic to human development - to lead a long,
healthy, creative life and to enjoy a decent
standard of living, freedom, dignity, self-esteem
and the respect of others."14 When we consider
women's experiences in the face of globalization
in this light, there is room for review, renewal
and transformation. Women need to take
control of their own bodies and their own
sexuality; be agents to negotiate, transform
and affirm their "selfhood and self-esteem";
and believe that it is God's word for them
today.

Notes
1. M Vanamala, "Informalization and Feminization of a
Formal Sector Industry: A Case Study", in Economic
and Political Weekly, vol.36 no.26 (June 30 2001),
pp.2378-89.
2. Gabriele Dietrich, "Emerging Feminist and
Ecological Concerns in Asia", In God's Image, vol.12,
no.1 (Spring 1993), p.31.
3. "The Need for a Dialogue of Difference: Towards
New Visions" (a response by Vimochana, a Bangalore-
based forum for women's rights, to the Draft Country
Paper prepared for the Beijing World Conference), p.7.
4. Cynthia Stephen, ed., Women in India: Profiles and
Herstories (Bangalore: National Alliance of Women,
1996), p.25.
5. S Krishnaswamy, "Female Infanticide in
Contemporary India: A Case study of Kallars of Tamil
Nadu', in Rehana Ghadially, ed., Women in Indian
Society, p.186.
6. .Loc. cit.
7. Op. cit., p.187.
8. Bina Agarwal, ed. Structures of Patriarchy (New
Delhi: Kali for Women, 1988), p.102.
9.Madhu Kishwar, "When Daughters are Unwanted:
Sex Determination Tests in India', Manushi, no.86,
(Jan - Feb 1995), pp.15f.
10. Ashish Bose, "Census of India 2001 and After",
Economic and Political Weekly, vol.36, no.20 (May 1
2001), pp.1686f.
11. Lokayan ( March 13 1996), p.17.
12. The Indian Express, January 17 1997
13. The message was titled "From one queen to
another", asking the beauty pageants to see their link
to the woman-product equation and put a stop to
gender injustice and violence. See the pamphlet that
was circulated on November 23 1996 by Vimochana,
Bangalore, along with other like-minded women's
organizations. The price for the protest that day was
that the demonstrators (myself included) were arrested
by the police because we were identified as trouble-
makers, disturbers of the peace!
14. Neer Burra, "Cultural Stereotypes and Household
Behaviour: Girl Child Labour in India', Economic and
Political Weekly (February 3-10 2001), p.481.