Ari Cowan

9/21/08
SS-119

Modern Capitalism

In the modern capitalist system, Multinational Corporations routinely shift sections of

their production overseas. Multinationals undergo the expenses of this move to lower the costs

of production in the long run either by lowering the cost of labor, improving production rates, or

a combination of these two goals. While this process lowers the production cost of clothing and

other such commodities, it does so by underpaying and abusing the already impoverished work-

ers in third world countries. These workers are predominantly female: over seventy percent of

workers in export-processing zones in South Korea and Guatemala are female, and woman make

up over eighty percent of the workforce in the export-processing zones of Mexico, Taiwan, Sri

Lanka, Malaysia and the Philippines1. There are many misconceptions about the plight of wo-

men workers in the modern capitalist market, many of which have been created by the Multina-

tional Corporations that benefit from them. In the modern capitalist system, women workers in

Multinational Corporations are oppressed first by the inequality of capitalism, and then by the

patriarchy already present throughout the world.

CEOs and public representatives of Multinational Corporations maintain that factory jobs

provide women with an opportunity that would otherwise be unavailable to them. They posit

that factory jobs provide women with financial independence and supply these women with

spending money. While this is occasionally partially true in some cultures, in the majority of

cultures it is not. In Java young female workers are provided with spending money, but they are

in no way financially independent from their families. Although Java factory girls usually keep

nearly all of their spending money for themselves, and occasionally even ask their parents for ad-

1 Padavic and Reskin, Women and Men at Work, (New York: Pine Forge Press, 2002) Pg. 33
ditional money, their meager salaries provide them with barely enough for a few creature com-

forts. In Java most families buy blocks of unscented soap, and in the poorer households a single

block of soap will be used for washing dishes, doing laundry, and bathing. Factory girls often

use their money to purchase bars of scented soap for bathing, but the price of these small bars

alone is more than half a days wages2. The jobs that are provided by Multinational Corporations

in Java supply their employees with spending money, but the pay is so meager that this money is

unable to make a significant difference in employees’ living conditions despite the long hours

and poor working conditions.

Javanese women's ability to keep their earnings rather than support the family as a whole

is a rare phenomenon. In Taiwan daughters give fifty to eighty percent of their earnings back to

the family, and in China this percentage jumps to fifty to one hundred percent3. In these coun-

tries women generally have much less control over where or even whether they work in Multina-

tional Corporations. In Taiwan parents often decide for their daughters when they will stop

schooling and where and when they will start working4. The owners of Multinational Corpora-

tions propose that women are pulled into factory work because it is an attractive offer. As Kung

and Greenhalgh demonstrate, factory girls often do not make the choice to work, but have this

work pushed upon them by a desperate and destitute family. Even when women do make their

own choice to enter into factory work they are paid miniscule wages and often work under awful

conditions.

Multinational Corporations claim to provide better working conditions and wages than

employment opportunities offered by employers from host countries. It is true that incomes of
2 Diane L. Wolf, The Women, Gender & Development Reader, (London and New Jersey: Zed Books LTD, 
1997) Pg. 124
3 Diane L. Wolf, The Women, Gender & Development Reader, (London and New Jersey: Zed Books LTD, 
1997) Pg. 124/126
4 Kung(1981 and 1983) Greenhalgh(1985)
those who work in Multinational Corporations tend to be higher than those who work for em-

ployers of the same nationality or country, and that women usually prefer employment in Mul-

tinational Corporations, but in Multinational Corporations workers are more exploited and have

less job security. This lack of job security comes from Multinational Corporations’ ability to

move production elsewhere if labour-market conditions or government policies change to make

production less profitable5. This means that if government regulations would improve the work-

ing conditions, hours or wages of factory workers, Multinational Corporations would most likely

move to a different country where these regulations were not in place. This ability to move also

makes the success of strikes and unions nearly impossible. Multinational Corporations obliterate

the bargaining power of the worker by utilizing a worldwide surplus of labor, leaving employees

at the whim of corporate interest with no security in their job or consequently any monetary as-

pect of their lives. Even when labor markets tighten, Multinational Corporations simply import

migrant workers to keep wages low as can be seen in Singapore6.

Multinational Corporations offer higher wages and better working conditions than em-

ployers from the host countries, but these wages and working conditions are still much worse

than in the Multinationals’ home countries. In fact, few benefits other than the meager wages of

employees are left on foreign soil. Multinationals provide few transferable skills to their work-

ers, making them dependent on a job void of dependability; imperialist corporations rely heavily

on foreign capital, technology and markets, and they do not provide any prospect of improve-

ment in job quality or pay; many Multinational Corporations, especially those within free trade

zones, have made unions illegal; few taxes are paid within the country where employees live;

5 Linda Y.C. Lim, The Women, Gender & Development Reader, (London and New Jersey: Zed Books 
LTD, 1997) Pg. 219
6 Linda Y.C. Lim, The Women, Gender & Development Reader, (London and New Jersey: Zed Books 
LTD, 1997) Pg. 226
and the giant profits that are accrued through the exploitation of third world workers are nearly

completely transfered oversees7. While when viewed in the immediate sense working conditions

and wages of employees at Multinational Corporations are better than in national corporations,

the lack of job security and lack of economic improvement in the host country make conditions

in Multinational Corporations less desirable in the long run.

Young women are targeted for employment in Multinational Corporations for a number

of reasons, but these reasons are deliberately misconstrued by the CEOs and spokespeople of im-

perialist companies. CEOs and spin doctors attempt to convince the public that women are em-

ployed because they have naturally “nimble fingers” and are “consistent workers.” In reality,

women’s fingers are no more naturally nimble than is the ability to ride a bicycle, and what

CEOs mean when they say that women are “consistent workers” is that they believe women to be

docile and submissive. Both of these beliefs are wrong. Women are thought to have “naturally”

nimble fingers because from a very early age they have been taught by their mothers’ and grand-

mothers’ to sew, cook and clean, all endeavors that require dexterity8. By proposing that women

are “naturally” nimble fingered, the Multinational Corporations are able to call the work women

do in factories unskilled labor, despite the fact that women have been trained for such work for

most of their lives. This was illustrated in Malaysian electronics and Malawi textile factories

where mail productivity was lower than female productivity in the same plants9. Women are

thought to be docile and submissive because patriarchal society has trained them to act in this

way. In fact, as was observed by Heyzer (1978) in a textile factory in Singapore, women work-

7 Linda Y.C. Lim, The Women, Gender & Development Reader, (London and New Jersey: Zed Books 
LTD, 1997) Pg. 218
8 Diane Elson and Ruth Pearson, The Women, Gender & Development Reader, (London and New Jer­
sey: Zed Books LTD, 1997) Pg. 193
9 Diane Elson and Ruth Pearson, The Women, Gender & Development Reader, (London and New Jer­
sey: Zed Books LTD, 1997) Pg. 192­3
ers remain on guard and characteristically subservient in the presence of their supervisors, but go

as far as to mock and ridicule them when they are not present. Female docility and subservience

can be seen turned on its head in South Korea, where six hundred female workers occupied the

Wuonpoong factory in a sit-in hunger strike. This strike was only ended when gangs of men and

police officers stormed the factory, hospitalizing one hundred women10. One of the major reas-

ons for the employment of women in Multinational Corporations is avoided if possible by CEOs

and spokespeople when the topic is broached. Women are paid less than men. Multinationals try

to explain this away by saying that women are not primary providers and thus need less money

than men, but this is often not the case. Multinational Corporations hire people who are in posi-

tions that are particularly vulnerable to exploitative labour practices, meaning that they are in

desperate need of the job and will not rock the boat. The prime worker is one who is young,

poor, heads a household and is the sole support of her children. In the apparel industry ma-

quiladoras, about one-third of the women workers head households and are the sole support of

their children. Women are targeted for employment in Multinational Corporations because they

are already skilled workers, they need the jobs too desperately to make trouble, and they are

cheaper to employ than male workers.

Many advocates of Multinational Corporations claim that capitalism liberates women

from a patriarchal system, but this is simply not true. Capitalism’s primary goal is the creation of

wealth for those who are already wealthy enough to invest in capital. Patriarchy and gender sub-

ordination provide cheap labor for those with capital, and these institutions have been used to un-

derpay women throughout the history of Multinational Corporations. Besides utilizing patri-

archy to lower wages, Multinationals also provide an incentive for fathers to exert more control

10 Maud and David Easter, “Women Fight Back,” Multinational Monitor Volume 4, November 8, 1983
over their daughters by sending them to work in factories whether they wish to or not11. While it

has been argued that the ability to earn a wage gives women more freedom, in most third world

countries women do not gain greater status within the family or more decision-making power

with the advent of their wages. Even within the workforce women are denigrated to lower posi-

tions than men almost without exception. In the rare occasions when women do rise in their

jobs, it is usually to replace men who have moved to even higher positions. Even when women

do rise in their jobs it is only to be surpassed by men12.

In theory capitalism should create an even market where those who produce best are paid

the most, but this no longer occurs. With the emergence of globalization the balance between the

Bourgeois and Proletariat has been knocked completely off kilter. Multinational Corporations

now can move wherever they please, stripping the proletariat of their power as the limited labor

force. This has hurt women the most. As the inferior sex due to thousands of years of patriarchy,

women are first brought to their knees by the whip of capitalism and then pushed lower by the

flailing arms of patriarchy.

11 Diane Elson and Ruth Pearson, The Women, Gender & Development Reader, (London and New Jer­
sey: Zed Books LTD, 1997) Pg. 199
12 Linda Y.C. Lim, The Women, Gender & Development Reader, (London and New Jersey: Zed Books 
LTD, 1997) Pg. 226
 Bibliography

Easter, David. "Women Fight Back." Multinational Monitor Aug. 1983.

Fuentes, Annette, and Barbara Ehrenreich. "The New Factory Girls." Multinational Monitor Aug.

1983.
Reskin, Barbara F., and Irene Padavic. Women and Men at Work. New York: Pine Forge P, 2002.

Visvanathan, Nalini, Lynn Duggan, Laurie Nisonoff, and Nan Wiegersma. The Women, Gender

& Development Reader. London and New Jersey: Zed Books LTD, 1997.