Quiet Mountain Essays; vo.I, no. X                                                                                                      Copyright, 2004

Domestic/Unpaid Labor and Economic Liberalization Policies:
A Gender Perspective


by  
Chineze J. Onyejekwe, PhD.

Abstract  

This paper analyzes the impact of economic liberalization policies on women’s domestic/ unpaid work.    


Introduction

In many countries it is women who shoulder most of the responsibilities and tasks related to the care and nurturing of the family including laundry, food preparation, childcare, care of the sick, and cleaning.  In many countries of the South, women also make an important contribution to family food production and water and firewood provision.  These tasks add to women’s workload and are often an obstacle to engaging in political action or expanding economic activities.  Recent research has sought to demonstrate the relationship between this “reproductive work” and the “productive “ sector of the economy, in particular, the dependence of all productive activities on the creation and maintenance of a healthy labor force through this work at the household level, and the way in which the reproductive sector can be affected by the consequences of economic policies related to trade, investment and more especially, public expenditure (United Nations 2002).  It is women, particularly the poor who bear the real costs of the Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs), that is, as mothers, wives and providers (Beneria and Feldman 1992).  These issues have implications for gender analysis.


For the past two to three decades, many countries in the developing world have been implementing economic liberalization policies, otherwise known as SAPs, designed to accelerate the integration of the developing economies to the global economy.  This is basically in order to attract foreign investment, as well as achieving higher levels of economic growth.  Attached to this design were two types of policies established as prerequisites for access to loans, these were: stabilization and adjustment.  While stabilization involves short-term measures to restore balance of payments, structural adjustment measures are implemented on a longer-term basis, to restructure the economy and generate economic growth.  However, trade liberalization policies affect the cost and availability of food, medicines, household goods, and social services (Appleton and Teal 1998).  The consequences of the SAPs as summarized by Zonny Woods (2002) include:


·        Cuts in wages where women earn less than men
·        Increase in food prices which women are responsible to provide
·        Decrease in subsistence agriculture where women are traders and growers while men control all the cash crops
·        Reduction in social spending where the responsibility for health
·       Welfare and education become women's responsibility
·        Unemployment where women are the ones to lose jobs first.


These policies have implications for women’s unpaid labor especially in many developing countries where social services are being privatized and cut back, leaving already overburdened women to take on further unpaid responsibilities.  For example, women may have less time available for reproductive work but simultaneously face greater demands to provide services.  These effects can be seen in areas such as:


·        Subsidized daycare is cut:  Women provide free childcare for their families and neighbors.  When medical services are cut, women care for those who would otherwise have been hospitalized.  
·        Removing food subsidies: This is a common tactic for reducing public expenditure, and this move results in increased food prices.
·        Devalued currencies: This also makes imported food more expensive, and higher food costs tend to be borne by the woman in the house who has less to feed her children.  She may compensate by eating only once a day herself or having protein only once a week (Moser 1993)


Economic policies have affected women’s unpaid work in a specific manner.  Inherent in structural adjustment programs and the dominant economic agenda is an assumption of the unlimited availability of women’s time and unpaid labor.  According to Dzodzi Tsikata and Joanna Kerr (2000), women are seen as a resource to be tapped to promote the efficiency of the market, and a solution to the shortfall in social services.  While stay-at-home parents earn nothing for all they contribute, including cooking, housekeeping, accounting, tutoring, chauffeuring, and crisis intervention, they often work longer hours than men, because many bear the double burden of working outside the house, and of child rearing and looking after the home.  Fewer women than men work as paid labor.  More women than men work in the informal sector of the economy, in agriculture, handicrafts, etc., often as unpaid laborers.  This unpaid labor of women is given little consideration by governments, though it may be difficult and time consuming, and a burden that is not shared (United Nations 2000).  This is because diversity is reflected in the way that productive work is defined.  


Robert Kahn (1991), for example, defines work as productive behavior or any activity that adds to the stock or flow, of valued goods and services.  He adds that if the activity generates valued goods and services, it is productive, and the magnitude of its productivity can be defined as the market value (actual or attributed) of the goods and services so generated minus the non-labor costs involved in their production.  Theoretically, this definition of work as exchange seems promising, in practice however, it leads to the exclusive concern with paid employment.  Contrarily, Lourdes Beneria (1982) suggests that the concept of productivity of labor be defined to show that labor can be productive only in the sense of surplus value as long as it can tap, extract, exploit and, appropriate labor that is spent in the production of life, or subsistence production.  She adds that this is non-wage labor done by women.  Moreover, in many developing countries, domestic labor forms part of the economic activities in the informal sector that in most cases is considered non-work in national statistics.


Conventional approaches to economic policy leave out much of the work that women do which includes the unpaid care work that women do for their families and the communities.  For decades, the International Women's Movement has been actively trying to get women's unpaid work recognized and valued by international agencies, national governments, policy analysts, social movement activists and families.  Hopefully, this will lead to policies that focus more on the alleviation of the negative effects of economic liberalization policies on women’s unpaid labor.


References

Appleton, Simon and Francis Teal (1998) “Human Capital and Economic Development.” A Background paper prepared for the African Development Report 1998.

Beneria Lourdes (1982) Women and Development: The Sexual Division of labor in Rural Societies. New York:Praeger.        


Beneria, Lourdes and Shelley Feldman (1992) Unequal Burden: Economic Crises, Persistent Poverty, and Women’s Work. Boulder, Colorado: West view.

Kahn, Robert (1991) ‘The Forms of Women’s Work', in Marianne Frankenhaeuser, Ulf Lundberg and Margaret Chesney (eds.), Women and Health: Stress and Opportunities,  pp.65-83.  New York: Plenum Press.

Moser, Caroline (1993) “Adjustment from Below: Low-Income Women, Time, and the Triple Role in Guayaquil, Ecuador.” Pp. 173-196 in: Radcliffe, S. A. and S. Westwood (eds.) Viva: Women and Popular Protest in Latin America. London: Routledge.

Tsikata, Dzodzi and Joanna Kerr (2000) Demanding Dignity: Women Confronting Reforms in Africa. The North South Institute and Third World Network-Africa.

United Nations  (2000) The World's Women 2000. P. 126. New York, NY.

_____________(2000) “Mainstreaming Gender: An Overview.” New York: UN.  


                                                                 











 








  Chineze J. Onyejekwe obtained a Masters degree in Labor Relations and a PhD in Sociology from the Universities of Ibadan, Nigeria and Durban-Westville in South Africa.  Her specialization is in the area of 'Gender and Development'.  She subsequently taught, guided and conducted research in the Center for Gender Studies and the Center for Cultural and Media Studies of the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa.  She has published in journals such as the Asian Journal of Women's Studies (AJWS).  Currently residing in Concord, New Hampshire (USA), she is involved in collaborative research dealing with broad-based women’s empowerment issues.