On Tuesday, May 15th, AWE member Maylin Biggadike, who has a Master’s in Economics, a Master’s in Theology and a Ph.D. in Christian Social Ethics, spoke to us about Women and Economic Development. She focused on the issues of women and poverty, especially about the distribution of wealth and economic assistance – and whether there is gender equity in these areas. The quick answer: no. AWE’s immediate task: what do we want to do to address the problem.
Maylin began by saying that globalization was supposed to be the rising tide that lifts all boats, but most of the women in poverty around the world don’t have boats. Poor women are not gaining from globalization, in fact, many are losing ground. As a strawberry picker in Mexico said, “For every strawberry Americans eat out of season, a Mexican child dies of hunger.” That’s because the fields that grew the staple of Mexican diet, maize, are now being used to grow strawberries. So now maize is imported from the US at a higher cost for the poor. In Cambodia, and in many other countries, globalization means that women work in sweatshops 18 hours a day and still don’t earn enough to feed their families.
The Gender Gap – the difference between the economic and educational opportunities for men and women – is not getting better. It is most acute in developing nations, but in both developed and developing countries, women still only earn 78% of what men earn for the same work. Poor women represent 2/3 of the poorest people. More and more of them are engaged in “Informal Work” – work that does not even get looked at by Gender Budgeting. For example, women represent 70% of agricultural labor and provide 90% of the food in the developing world, but are not included in budget deliberations because they are poor farmers who have no place in the global agricultural economy.
More and more women are employed in poorly paid ghetto jobs, characterized by a lack of upward mobility. There is a great “feminization” of poverty: the majority of the world’s 1.5 billion people who live on less that $1 are women.
The trade liberalization policies begun by President Bush as in the case of CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement) has not benefited poor women. In the maquilas (sweatshops) for example, economic growth has been achieved at the expense of women working long hours in horrible conditions. It demonstrates the inadequacy of liberalizing economic controls without first creating the social conditions to truly benefit all concerned. Maylin talked to a group of women in Nicaragua who told her about the conditions in the US, Korean and Taiwanese-owned factories the government sponsored to bring in foreign investment. Women must sign a waiver saying if they become pregnant, they get fired. Heat in the airless “factories” is often 110 degrees and sometimes women are required to wear diapers to cut down on “bathroom breaks.” But the US factories are the best because they do not beat the women as other foreign owned factories do.
In machismo cultures, when mothers work, daughters have to stay home and take care of the younger children instead of going to school. The mothers are earning enough to feed the family rice and beans, but there is no advancement and no opportunity to put aside a little money for future security, medical care or education. Basically, only the owners and managers of the factories and land benefit.
As people of faith, we need to critique this. We need to look at who bears the greatest burdens and try to help them. But statistics can be deceptive. For example, in Brazil, there are more girls in school than boys and they are getting better grades, and there are more women in the work force. However, Brazilian women are still getting paid 30% less than men for the same job. There is a lot of sex trafficking and horrible slums.
In Pakistan, Africa, almost everywhere Maylin looked, free trade and globalization has only benefited the elite in the countries. It has not helped women-headed families, tribal groups and the rural poor who don’t own land. She also noted that the whole notion of “empire” is shifting away from America and Europe, so that by 2030, much of the world’s businesses will be run out of India and China.
Poverty is the failure of basic capabilities (health, education, avoidance of early death) to reach minimally acceptable levels. Economic growth is important only to the extent that it helps eradicate deprivation and improve capabilities and the quality of life of ordinary people. In the US, poverty rates in 1996 were the same as in 1968, but inequality INCREASED. Only the top 1/5 saw a real rise in income, and the gap between poor and rich is rising.
This must be a topic of concern for all people of faith. What can we do? Christian social ethics has economic justice at the center. We are all asked to reach out to “the widow and the poor.”
Micro-credit is booming now that Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Prize for starting the Grameen Bank and proving that women, even those with no collateral, are better credit risks than men. But should women be allowed to decide what they want to do with this credit? Maylin gave the example of two villages in Pakistan where women were allowed to choose what to do with their micro-credit. One village bought goats to raise and the other decided to grow roses. The roses only brought in about 1/7 what the goats did, but the women were very happy with their decision. They felt that roses increased their quality of life more than goats.
Questions:
What should AWE do about this?
Should we create something like our Resolution 13/31 to present to the ACC about gender budgeting/ economic development for women?
When reading about gender budgeting, should we all try to hold our own churches accountable, as well as our governments?
Suggested reading:
Anne Firth Murray
