Globalization, labor standards, and women's rights: dilemmas of collective (in)action in an interdependent world

Abstract

This paper challenges the idea that a “social clause” to enforce global labor standards through international trade agreements serves the interests of women export workers in poor countries. Drawing on fieldwork in Bangladesh and empirical studies, the author argues that exploitative as these jobs appear to Western reformers, for many women workers in the South they represent genuine opportunities. Clearly, these women would wish to better their working conditions; yet having no social safety net, and knowing that jobs in the informal economy, their only alternative, offer far worse prospects, women cannot fight for better conditions. Moreover, global efforts to enforce labor standards through trade sanctions may lead to declining employment or to the transfer of jobs to the informal economy. Lacking measures that also address the conditions of workers in this informal economy, demands for “the social clause” will reinforce, and may exacerbate, social inequalities in the labor market.

Keywords:

• Globalization
• women workers
• export garments
• Bangladesh
• labor standards

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Lourdes Beneria and Savitri Bisnath for comments on an earlier version of this paper; the two anonymous referees for their insightful and probing comments; and to Nilufer Cagatay for pushing me to think more clearly about my own position. I am grateful also for the editorial support provided by Feminist Economics.

Notes

JEL Codes: J7, J8, I30

It should be noted that not all of the eight conventions have received the same degree of support internationally. Ninety-five countries have ratified all eight conventions and a further thirty-five (including Bangladesh) have ratified seven of the eight. The US, which has ratified only two of these conventions, is on the “less support” end of the spectrum, along with a handful of mainly developing countries.

Some of the facts produced by the NLC were subsequently disputed by journalists writing in the Los Angeles Times (“Stitching Together a Crusade”) and the New York Times (“Hondurans in ‘Sweatshops’ See Opportunity”), who suggested that many workers in the very factories the NLC had targeted perceived their jobs rather differently than the evaluations provided by the NLC.

The Multi-Fibre Agreement of 1974 was put in place in the interests of “orderly trade” between developed and developing countries in garments and textiles. The anti-surge clause allowed quotas to be imposed when exports from any developing country to a developed country exceeds 6 percent a year.

Such as Fatema Akhter in the opening quote.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Naila Kabeer

JEL Codes: J7, J8, I30