GENDER

By
Melesse Zenebework
Nov.14, 2012

Women are More Beneficiaries of Globalization

Table of Content
Introduction

Areas of Globalization Benefits for Women

Labor Market Education Health Empowerment Conclusion

Introduction
Globalization is a system in which global economic, political, cultural and ideological dominations are influencing people of the world. Even if the system more benefits the stronger and weakens the weaker, it still provides a better platform for the advancement of ideas and technologies. Gender issue is one of the most sensitive areas often raised in relation to globalization. Since ensuring the equality of women is one of the ongoing process, we can only identify the changes and current status of women comparing the past and the advantages of men at the same time. Several researches and reports from different individuals and organizations show that globalization is favoring the points on gender equalities. Although women do not enjoy the fanciest advantages of globalization in comparison to men, researches projected that they are becoming beneficiaries in terms of labor market, education, health and power.

Labor Market
Globalization has influenced both the quality and quantity of work available for women. It has increased the number of jobs available and it has altered the nature of the jobs. Specially in the paid part-time jobs, women more concentrated than men.
Foreign Direct investment by MNCs in several developing countries has led to the creation of Export Processing Zones where women provide up to 80 percent of the labor force.(ILO,1998, p.142) In the light manufacturing sector, such as textiles, clothing and footwear, woman have gained an advance over men because of the lower income wage that they command. Male participation rates in the labor force declined between the 1950s and the 1990s from 93.7 percent to 90.1 percent while womens participation rates rose from 35.9 percent to 47.9 percent. (Tzannatos, 1999, p. 553)

Labor Market continued..

Sex segregation during the second half of the 20th century, it has declined and surprisingly it has declined faster in the developing world so that in the 1990s sex segregation was less pronounced than in the advanced industrial nations. Indeed, sex segregation in the industrial Europe was higher than Asia and Africa by both industry and occupation in the 1990s( Tzannatos, 1999, p.556/557) Even if it is caused by a sense of sex segregation, the feminization of part-time jobs were mostly occupied by women in most countries of the developed and developing world in the 1990s. This played its own role in the distribution of the opportunity for paid employment. The report showed of the twelve countries which it examines, in only two- Mexico and Turkey is the part-time employment rate equal between men and women, in the other ten countries, women dominate with the UK showing the highest rate women made up 87 percent of part-time workers in 1996 (ILO 1998, p. 142)

Education
Globalization has influenced the education of women in variety of ways. These five points are the major ones by their contribution for the advancement of womens education opportunity. Globalization became one of the forced which have been undermining the traditional cultural belief that womens education is not important since their place is in the home.

Brain rather than brawn is the essence of most jobs created by modern globalized technology. Moreover, employers prefer women as employees because they find them more adaptable to the demand of a flexible labor market. The connection between parental education and children's educational achievement has been known for decades but the evidence linking the mothers education level to her childrens health is more recent.

Education continued .
There is an inverse relationship between the level of womens education on one hand and the size of the their families, as well of child mortality rates, on the other. In brief, educating women has been shown to be a critical ingredient in breaking the vicious multigenerational cycle of poor child health, low educational performance, low income, high fertility and poor child health(Todaro, 2000, P.348). The increasing kind of jobs created by globalization needed the importance of academic knowledge and performances and these have reduced the gender bias in professional careers by promoting images of successful career women in the global mass media. International bodies which are part of the globalization process have assisted the cause of womens education. The UNICEF girls education program in more than fifty countries attempt to stimulate gender sensitivity in both the contents of the curricula and the methods of teaching so as to encourage girls enrolment in schools and close the enrolment gap with boys(Bellamy, 199, P. 56)

Health
Globalization has also contributed to the wellbeing of womens health condition. This can be seen in two major aspects which tell the how the health condition of a human being is well nurtured. Life Expectancy: according to the UNDPs annual report of the 1999, the life expectancy of women has more improved than men even if both have shown positive improvements. It tells only one country has which is the Maldives showed a higher life expectancy at birth for men than women.
The rate of infant mortality is another blunt but equally useful health indicator. As with life expectancy, the general picture has been one of the steady improvement over the years. Infant mortality rates declined for girls and in 1992 only one country, Egypt had higher infant mortality rate than for baby girls than for baby boys- 37.3 per thousand live births of baby girls compared to35.3 per thousand baby boys(UNDP,1995 p.35)

Gender Empowerment
Empowering women is one of the attribution of globalization that women are coming these days into the global media and promote gender and equality as one of the few powerful ones in the world. Women have lost the power that individuals and groups have stems from the command that they have over material, social, political and ideological resources over other individuals and groups in the society.(George V. Globalization and inequalities.p.132) Income: even if this has to be viewed within the cultural context of each society, women having their own income gives them more freedom as well as more power in the community they live in. it also improves their position in the society. Education: the advances in education achieved by women in recent decades have contributed immensely to their empowerment. Education enables women to become more independent, lifts their status in the society and helps them to influence the decision making process even in most traditional societies.

Gender Empowerment continued.

Birth Control: the spread of birth control techniques has enabled women to be more in control of their reproductive functions. Numerous pregnancies inevitably take their toll on the independence and health of the women particularly in the societies where their status is already low. Globalization has enhanced the spread of democratic form of government throughout the whole world. This ,on the other hand, has been a factor of that has contributed to the rise of womens power. Only a handful of countries today have either no democratic government election or no enfranchisement for women. Changes in the legal system concerning gender issues in a country can make a contribution to womens empowerment. As early as 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women. By 1995, 139 countries had all signed it while 41 countries did not sign it 6 signed it with reservations and 43ratified it with reservations(UNDP, 1995, p. 43)

Gender Empowerment continued.

The undermining of the traditional gender ideology has strengthened the forces of for womens empowerment. Traditional gender ideologies consider women as inferior to men and have been used to justify all sorts of discriminatory practices against women. Undermining such ideologies can but help the empowerment of women, even though this may be seen by some as a form of cultural imperialism.
These are strong forces making for the increased empowerment of women. But the process is neither irresistible nor inevitable. When the Taliban gained power in Afghanistan in 1996, for example, it demanded that women should stay at home and closed girls schools(Chinkin, 1999, p.308)
Malala Yousafzai

Malala, the little girl of the Pakistan is one of the current issues

Conclusion
Although it is very hard today for women to enjoy better advantages of globalization than men, it is still obvious that women are gaining improving benefits comparing to the previous situations. Todays generation has a completely different attitude and perception towards women from the generation a decade before. This difference is mostly resulted from the influence of globalization and global ideologies towards the issue.

The United Nations report and many other research findings are showing that globalization if benefiting women in terms of education, health which comprises of life expectancy and infant mortality, power and economic status. In some of the aspects, they are even more beneficiaries than men and other groups in the society.