Addressing the impact of globalization, poverty and women's labor force participation: Three case studies

As aspect of economic liberalization and globalization has been the deregulation of labor markets accompanied by the informalization and feminization of work.  While more women around the world are part of the paid labor force, many of these jobs are outside of the formal, regulated labor sector. This informalization translates into many working women lacking social and legal protections. The same trend has also been accompanied by the feminization of poverty as more women work for very low wages and under hardship conditions.

This paper will examine the effects of globalization and the confluence of the women’s movement on women’s labor market participation in low-income and non-Western countries. Specifically, the paper will concentrate on the experiences of women caught between Western ideologies that view women’s labor as self-empowering and the realities of globalization that force women to work outside of the home under sub-standard conditions.  Moreover, many of these women struggle with gender constructs that emphasize their roles as wives and mothers and not as primary breadwinners. In many cultural contexts, working women must negotiate their new roles with men who are not supportive of their external employment and yet, are dependent on their wives’ incomes.  The paper will then move towards discussing and analyzing several programs in India, Bangladesh and Burkina Faso in Africa, that have successfully helped train women to work outside of the home and have also provided them with skills that teach self-empowerment, networking, and role negotiation. These case studies illustrate that while globalization has further exacerbated hardship conditions for women, there are also opportunities that can be capitalized and expanded on.