[m2c] Feminist Critiques of Structural Adjustment by Pamela Sparr (part 2 of 3)

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Chapter 2 from "Mortgaging Women's Lives: Feminist Critiques of
Structural Adjustment." By Pamela Sparr. 1994. pgs 13-36.

Feminist Critiques of Structural Adjustment
[continued]


EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE OF THE IMPACT OF SAPS ON WOMEN

Preliminary research suggests that when the various policies
associated with moving towards a more free-market economy are taken
together, they potentially have profound and wide-ranging effects on
the lives of women and girls. They influence: women and girls' health
and safety; educational attainment; income; employment; working
conditions; access to land; marital status; family relationships;
mental health; self-concept; birth rates; marriage decisions; use of
time; where they live; migration decisions; access to information;
access to and use of public services; and their understanding of their
role and possibilities in life. In tracing out the effects, the image
of an intricate web comes to mind. We also have to be cognizant that,
at times, different effects may reinforce or contradict each other.

Below is a sample of some of the findings in the literature concerning
how adjustment programmes have affected females.

/Increasing numbers of women look for income-generating work/

To compensate for a husband's job loss, less steady income, and/or a
sharp fall in the purchasing power of the family income during the
adjustment period, more women have looked for work outside their home.
Studies have documented women's labour force participation rates
increasing in the Caribbean,14 Turkey (at least for urban women — see
Chapter 5), Costa Rica, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, the Philippines,
Argentina and Peru.15 Moser finds more women in her survey group
engaged in income generation as a result of the crisis and structural
adjustment in Ecuador.16 Similarly in Bolivia, between 1976 and 1986
male employment increased annually by 0.1 per cent while female
employment rose 2.7 per cent.

"From 1981 onwards the rate of female employment increases
exponentially. ... This means that at the most critical point in the
crisis there was a marked drop in male employment going hand in hand
with an increase — unparalleled in the last few decades — in the
presence of women in employment. This trend is almost certainly a
compensatory mechanism to maintain the family economy."17

/More women than men may become unemployed/

Despite new pressures to earn income, the evidence seems to indicate
that women were more likely to be unemployed than men as a result of
the crisis and various adjustment measures. A Brazilian study found
women's unemployment rates much higher than men's in the state of Sao
Paulo. Similarly, researchers noted that unemployment rates for
Argentinian female heads of household were higher than for male
heads.18

The Egyptian case study (Chapter 3) documents how privatization pushed
women back into the home. Women's unemployment was four times the rate
for men, and women's unemployment rates increased by one-third from
1976 to 1986. Within three years, Turkish women went from being
one-quarter of all discouraged urban workers (those who have stopped
looking for work because they feel they will not find a job) to
two-thirds, and their unemployment rates are higher than men's, at
every level of educational attainment except for illiterates in rural
areas (see Chapter 5). Jayaweera explains in Chapter 6 how Sri Lankan
women were more adversely affected (through job loss) than men by the
failure of import-substituting industries to adapt to open market
policy.

/Working conditions for women deteriorate/

Hatem finds that when Egyptian public enterprises try to run more
'efficiently' in line with SAP philosophy, they try to avoid hiring
women to keep under the gender workforce threshold set by law which
requires them to provide day care, maternity leave, etcetera. She also
finds that the state is now violating its own labour laws in its
treatment of women (for example, public enterprises hire girls below
the minimum wage), and reducing the quality of working conditions for
women in the public sector.

In Chapter 4, Manuh documents how Ghanaian women are losing job
protections, security and benefits as public sector work is cut. She
finds public sector layoffs affect least-skilled women the hardest.
Jayaweera in Chapter 6 describes the increasing concentration of women
in marginal, casual activities, which raises their vulnerability to be
exploited as labour and reinforces gender subordination.

A study sponsored by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in
Mexico found that young rural women were forced to emigrate to work as
domestic servants in other countries under 'extremely vulnerable
conditions'. Young women and wives were pulled off the land to work as
day labourers where 'they have no social benefits or social security,
live in sheds and are easy targets for sexual abuse'. Other rural
women took on subcontracting work through a 'putting out' system to
increase income. Yet this new type of work represents only a fraction
of the income that other home-based activities formerly provided, and
the 'present crisis has further reduced the amount of income this
provides'.19

/Wage differentials grow/

Structural adjustment widens wage differentials between Egyptian women
and men (see Chapter 3) and income disparities between the sexes in
Sri Lanka (Chapter 6). In Argentina, women's incomes fell to less than
50 per cent of the average male income in both the industrial and
service sectors.20

/As formal sector employment opportunities diminish, more women enter
the informal sector/

The stability and 'formality' of labour relationships deteriorated in
Brazil in the 1980s. More than three-quarters of all women who joined
the economically active population during 1981-84 did not have work
cards signed (indicating a formal job with such things as paid
vacations, labour rights, etcetera). The UNICEF study found that this
was not due to irregular work or fewer labour hours. In Argentina,
increasing percentages of women working outside the home were employed
in domestic service.21 Researchers are concerned that Argentinian
women's employment status could be regressing, with women shifting
from semi-skilled work to unskilled positions and losing legal
protections and social security benefits.22

Studies indicate women are also increasingly turning to informal
sector work in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Jamaica (as petty
export traders) and urban Africa.23 In Tanzania, for example, poor and
middle-class women gave up 'status' employment for the informal sector
as wage restraints imposed under an SAP took effect. 'One of the
ironies of the situation in the late 1980s is that women who might
have prided themselves for having a job as a teacher, nurse, secretary
or even a factory worker, were frequently finding themselves better
off leaving their jobs to become self-employed on a full-time basis.'
They generally cited low pay as the reason.24 Similar results have
been reported for professional women in Nigeria leaving jobs to become
traders in the informal sector – because of better income
opportunities.25

An erosion of real wages has affected professional Jamaican women as
well. Some prefer to deal with it by emigrating. For example, between
1978 and 1985, 95 per cent of nurses trained in that period
emigrated.26

/Women become poorer/

The trends listed above certainly could contribute to women becoming
poorer (absolutely and in relation to men) in the process of
structural adjustment. This is one area, however, where the lack of
genderdisaggregated income and poverty data makes it difficult to
argue this point conclusively. Studies on Brazil27 and the Caribbean28
take the perspective that a sizeable percentage of poor households are
headed by women (30 per cent of poor urban households in Brazil).
Thus, the number of poor women (as heads of households or 'sharing'
poverty with partners) will be higher than the number of poor men.
(This assumes that single men are able to earn sufficient income so
they are not poor.)

Other researchers, however, are arguing that women are not necessarily
the poorest sector in a population, and the number of poor women has
not necessarily increased as a result of structural adjustment.29 Some
analysts who debate this point question whether the number of
female-headed households has really risen.

This will be one area of debate that can benefit from the more careful
longitudinal studies now under way. Because it is such a politically
sensitive issue, it will be important to scrutinize the methodology
and assumptions of data collection, as they can profoundly alter
conclusions about poverty trends.

/Export promotion (of manufactured goods) has mixed employment effects
on women/

In Bangladesh, traditional exports that employ large numbers of women
(for example, tea, handicrafts, handloomed work) were stagnant, so
women did not see increasing employment as a result of export
promotion. In the non-traditional export sector, female employment
surged in garments production (and somewhat in fish and shrimp
processing). However, given the garment industry's overcapacity and
trading partners' quota restrictions, the majorty of women are hired
on a temporary basis, as market fluctuations demand. 'It also appears
that many women tend to remain locked into apprentice grades.
Nevertheless, the average wages earned are relatively quite high
compared to alternative wage-earning opportunities for such women.'30
See Chapter 6 for a detailed look at what this has meant for Sri
Lankan women.

/Export cropping often does not benefit women/

Maria Floro details in Chapter 7 how the introduction of sugar export
cropping in the Philippines further marginalized women from farm
production. She concludes that while the SAP may have encouraged a
shift to export crops and 'unburdened' women from unpaid farm work,
that did not necessarily translate into a rise in paid work, better
economic status, or more bargaining power within the household. (What
kind of export crop is grown is an important variable. In the
Philippines sugar is considered a 'male' crop, requiring male labour
to harvest, while bananas are a 'female' crop.)

Ingrid Palmer argues that a neat dichotomy between men's cash crops
and women's non-traded food crops does not exist. Yet she has found
African women farmers often cannot benefit from devaluations because
they focus on own-consumption food production or trade in restricted
markets. Further, a bias in farm support services towards men and
unequal obligations and reciprocities regarding work lead to a gross
misallocation of resources and inequality among women and men in
agriculture. She argues that freeing prices will not guarantee the
best use of rural household resources. Unless there is a major reform
in terms of women's access to inputs (credit, fertilizer, land rights,
etcetera), market liberalization in agriculture will not benefit
women. Women would rather seek wage work and control their income than
work for their husbands full-time and not.31

In Kenya, traditional gender roles are breaking down and women are
increasingly playing an important role in export crop production, yet
men control the income they earn from cash cropping.32 A study of the
rice trade in Zaire found similar results. Women work as unpaid
labour, but their husbands control the income; work in rice
cultivation for their husbands also cuts into women's time on their
cash crop – cassava.33 Christina Gladwin draws the obvious conclusion:

"The result may be more African food crises in the 1990s, because women
contribute more to the production of food crops than to export crops
which are favored under SAPs. If food production is largely in the
non-monetized sector, as many authors ... demonstrate, price signals
designed to elicit improved supply responses in agriculture will have
virtually no effect."34

Palmer reiterates this point of view, in terms of a potential decline
in 'non-tradable' food output.

Uma Lele notes that SAPs can affect the distribution of income in
agriculture between women and men.35 Many factors (including crop
type; direction and size of price changes; technology used; female
property rights; gender division of labour, management and income),
enter into the equation, but often the distributional effects are
negative.

/Women's unpaid work escalates/

Stabilization and adjustment policies often involve cutbacks in social
services, higher prices for basic necessities, greater unemployment
and job insecurity – all measures that particularly hurt the poor. To
compensate, women seek ways to stretch their limited funds; and their
domestic responsibilities often climb. As Moser noted, they need to
spend more time shopping for cheaper items; food preparation takes
longer because they buy less processed food, and smaller quantities,
not only because of their reduced incomes but because they no longer
have a refrigerator.

Heyzer and Wijaya found that, after devaluation, more Javanese women
villagers cultivated home vegetable gardens to cope with food cost
escalation and, too, that farmers decreased their demand for paid
agricultural labour, trying instead to cut costs by using female
householders as unpaid labourers.36 Urban women may also try to begin
growing vegetables. There is evidence of increased farming of small
family plots in such dense urban areas as Santiago and Sao Paulo. The
government of Burkina Faso actually has a policy of encouraging
this.37

Public transport fares may now be unaffordable, meaning women have to
spend more time travelling because they must walk. They may also have
to spend more time taking care of the sick, and children (with school
hours curtailed). These are just two examples of how changes in public
services can affect women's time.

Waylen found that in Chile unpaid household labour intensified with
market liberalization.38 The editors of the UNICEF study /The
Invisible Adjustment/ conclude that the fact of poor women working
harder has enabled the bottom one-third of the population in Latin
America and the Caribbean to physically survive the economic crisis,
stabilization and adjustment measures.

While other analysts argue that women's work time has increased, Moser
concludes the problem is less an increase in the overall length of
time worked, but more a shift in how it is spent. She finds that women
in one Ecuadoran neighbourhood are having to allocate more time to
income generation and community management at the expense of
reproduction work (child-rearing). Moser thinks the increase in time
spent working is experienced by the daughters, who spend less time on
school work and more in domestic activities and possibly in
representing mothers at community meetings.

More research on the intensity of women's and men's work, as well as
its time allocation, may help better to clarify the dynamic here.

/Progress with girls' education slows/

As women's unpaid work burden becomes heavier, they enlist more help
from girls, thus reducing the girls' time and attention for their
homework. (Moser documents this in longitudinal household surveys in
Ecuador.) Using micro household level data, Weekes-Vagliani found
fewer women completing secondary schooling in Côte d'Ivoire in the
1980s (during a period of adjustment) than before.39

The United Nations (UN) found that since 1980 there has been a
slowdown in the rate of improvement in female:male enrolment ratios in
general education second-level schools in Africa and Asia.

"[This] may have been a consequence of economic recession and
increasing unemployment rather than of reductions in public
expenditure or a decline in real wages. The impact of recession on
enrolment seems to have been stronger in first- and second-level
schools, which may reflect the different socio-economic background of
parents with children in those schools, compared with those with
children (especially female children) in third-level schools."

Deteriorating female enrolment appears 'to have been closely linked
with periods of increasing unemployment'. 'The full impact of
reductions in public expenditure, which have affected the maintenance
of schools, the recruitment and retention of teachers and the quality
of education in the countries in the sample, may become visible only
later. '40

/Food consumption diminishes, anaemia increases/

Skyrocketing food prices and changing agricultural policies were
considered to be factors contributing to the fact that more than half
of Brazilian women do not eat enough; cultural norms which encourage
unequal food distribution within families is another. Studies show
that Brazilian women and girls are often the last to eat and eat less
than men and boys. In Amazon communities, for example, there were more
than twice as many malnourished women as men.41

Heyzer and Wijaya note a change in a Javanese village diet after
currency devaluation increased food costs. They correlate that with a
high percentage of women suffering protein deficiency and anaemia.42
Safa and Antrobus note that between 1981 and 1985 anaemia among
Jamaican women screened at ante-natal clinics almost doubled from 23
per cent to 43 per cent.43 When women are pregnant or lactating, any
decline in their health may have spill-over effects on children.

/Girls' health and mortality rates worsen/

The factors described above indicate that differential health outcomes
for girls and boys could be a disturbing possibility; much more
research is needed. Mahmud and Mahmud found higher mortality rates for
girls (1-4 years) than boys in Bangladesh, yet these rates increased
for both /at nearly the same pace/ between 1979 and 1983.44

/Women's fertility may be affected/

Waylen found that poor women in Chile had fewer births during the
market liberalization period. She thinks this may be why infant
mortality rates declined, rather than because of the effectiveness of
targeted social programmes.45 Moser speculates that when women need to
boost their income-earning activities, they have a greater need to
control their fertility. It would be interesting to see in Egypt,
whether delayed marriage and household formation will affect fertility
statistics (see Chapter 3).

/Women face greater reliance on credit/

A Javanese case study found that after a devaluation villagers felt a
repayment crunch and borrowed more.

"As households go into debt it is the women who have to carry the
burden, shame and harassment. It is the women who are harassed by the
money-lenders being the one usually at home or the one who has to
visit the village store regularly. In situations of extreme
indebtedness, women are forced to sell their assets including whatever
jewelry they may have kept aside for their old age."46

/Women suffer greater domestic violence and stress/

In Ecuador, Moser found this occurring as families' income fell, and
women asked their partners for more money. Weekes-Vagliani found an
increase in marital conflict and family systems in transition in ate
d'Ivoire as a result of the economic changes that occurred under
SAPs.47 Hatem (Chapter 3) notes that with the deteriorating
socioeconomic situation of young women (no job and delayed marriages
as a result), young Egyptian women are feeling a high degree of stress
and frustration.

Studies show Brazilian women experiencing more mental health problems,
unable to cope with earning insufficient money and having insufficient
time to care for their children.48 Studies detailing the rise in
long-distance export trading by Nigerian women note that they have to
stay away from home longer, because of the ways in which the SAPs have
affected trading conditions. 'Prolonged absences cause strain for the
spouse, and neglect of the children (which may induce overt or covert
polygyny).. ... Some of the children of international traders develop
behaviour problems such as delinquency and manic depression. '49

/An increased number of women are heads of households/

While there is much anecdotal discussion of this as an important
trend, two longitudinal studies that document this at the household
level were carried out by Moser in Ecuador and by Weekes-Vagliani in
Côte d'Ivoire. A Javanese case study finds many more male migrants
after a devaluation than before (implying more female heads of
households).50 Elson argues that male migration can be seen as
tantamount to desertion. Migration is a male survival strategy — not a
female or household strategy.51 Some researchers, however, are
questioning whether this trend is actually occurring.

/Household structures change/

In addition to the rise in the number of women-headed households, SAPs
affect family and household configurations in other ways. Moser found
extended families had fewer grandparents and more married sons and
daughters. Young Egyptian women are delaying marriage and depending on
their family longer (see Chapter 3).

IS IT ALL BAD?

While feminist theoretical critiques of structural adjustment and the
conclusions of early research would indicate that SAPs are extremely
exploitative of women, there are some positive aspects. Clark and
Manuh note that with deregulation of market trade in Ghana, 'physical
harassment [of women traders] by soldiers and police had stopped.
Adverse economic conditions, however, prevented [women traders] from
taking advantage of their new security to expand.'52

Tripp found positive repercussions for urban Tanzanian women's status
within the household. 'Necessity has forced a number of women into
earning money themselves in a way that has profoundly challenged men's
traditional views about the advantages of them playing a less
conspicuous economic role in the household. More importantly, it
changed women's own view about the nature of their contribution to
both the family and society in general ... women's involvement in
small projects enhanced their decision-making powers with respect to
household finances.'53

Some women can take advantage of new economic opportunities. This is
evident in the Philippines. Women in sugar households with tenurial
security are able to reduce their participation in the most
time-intensive activities (child care and domestic duties). They have
the income to hire domestic help and use the time to establish and
operate their own businesses. However, the numbers of women who can
improve their economic lot may be quite small compared to the total
number of women involved.

The evidence cited in this chapter, as well as the case studies in
this book, indicates that structural adjustment may promote greater
class differentiation between women as well as between women and men.
Note the concentration of power and income of Ghanaian traders54 and
among Filipino peasant families (Chapter 7), for example.

Yet the Egyptian case study (Chapter 3) indicates that this
generalization may not apply in the same way across countries. Some of
the economic differences between middle-class and poor women, urban
and rural women may diminish as a result of structural adjustment
(albeit in a negative way — with the middle-class falling rather than
the status of poor women improving). New economic tensions brewing
between women may take on a generational dimension.

-- 
"Until all of us are free, the few who think they are remain tainted 
with enslavement." Lee Maracle
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