Beyond women workers: genderingcsr

Though there is now a great deal of attention to the question of women workers and Corporate Social Responsibility (csr), a more far reaching analysis, which is informed by feminist economics approaches, stresses the importance of the gendered nature of the institutional context in which value chains operate, and the importance of acknowledging that labour markets are themselves gendered institutions which reflect socially constructed divisions of labour. This paper explores what a more holistic approach to corporate social responsibility might mean, especially when explored through the lens of gender analysis. I use the concept of social reproduction to examine the kinds of issues a gendered approach to csr might embrace, with particular attention to the "social", in terms of the reproduction of the labour power used in production. I apply this scrutiny to the emblematic example of the current spate of murders of young women in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, the location of thousands of manufacturing assembly plants producing for export to the United States. The paper concludes with some suggestions of initiatives which might be developed to incorporate a gendered dimension into a more comprehensive notion of csr. Notes 1 Michael Blowfield & Jedrzej George Frynas, 'Setting new agendas: critical perspectives on corporate social responsibility in the developing world', International Affairs, 81 (3), 2005, p 50. 2 See Rhys Jenkins, 'Corporate social responsibility', in Jan Piel & Irene Van Staveren (eds), Handbook of Economics and Ethics, Aldershot: Edward Elgar, forthcoming. 3 D Vogel, The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2005; and Peter Utting (ed), The Greening of Business in Developing Countries, London: Zed Press, 2000. 4 Major retailers, including Nestlé, Nike and Levy Stauss, were all the subject of consumer boycotts which threatened their market shares in the 1980s and 1990s. 5 See Patrick Macklem, 'Labour law beyond borders', Journal of International Economic Law, 5 (3), 2002 pp 605 – 645. 6 See unrisd, 'States in disarray: the social effects of globalization', Geneva: unrisd, 1995; and Ann Zammit, Development at Risk: Rethinking UN – Business Partnerships, Geneva: South Centre and unrisd, 2003. 7 Rhys Jenkins, 'Corporate codes of conduct: self regulation in a global economy', in ngls/unrisd (eds), Voluntary Approaches to Corporate Responsibility: Readings and a Resource Guide, ngls Development Dossier, United Nations, Geneva, 2002. The ilo retains its 'tripartite' status, meaning it is comprised of representatives of the state, employers and workers. However, since the 1990s the ilo has increasingly taken on a concern for 'Decent Work for All', which includes those in the informal economy who are often outside state regulation or trade unions. See ilo, Decent Work for All, at http://www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/relm/ilc/ilc89/rep-i-a.htm. 8 See Jenkins, 'Corporate social responsibility'. 9 Stephanie Barrientos & Diane Perrons, 'Gender and the global food chain: a comparative study of Chile and the UK', in H Afshar & S Barrientos (eds), Women, Globalization and Fragmentation in the Developing World, London: Macmillan, 1999, pp 15 – 173. See also Stephanie Barrientos & Catherine Dolan (eds), Ethical Sourcing in the Global Food System, London: Earthscan, 2006. 10 As part of its csr strategy MacDonalds has just (January 2007) announced that its fast food outlets in the UK, and subsequently in Europe, will sell 'fair-trade' coffee, sourced from Central American smallholders and paying a substantial premium. See http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-253436800. 11 'A feminist alternative would make social reproduction the dominant domain, with production and finance acting to serve it. The macroeconomic policy objective would be decent work for all, with an equal sharing of unpaid work between women and men, supported by public policy which recognises the importance of this work. In analysing how to move to this alternative from where we are now, we argue that feminist macroeconomics will need to build on and extend heterodox macroeconomics, while challenging neo-liberal macroeconomics.' Diane Elson, 'Feminist economics challenges mainstream economics', in Newsletter of the International Association for Feminist Economics, special issue edited by Bina Agarwal, 14 (3), 2004, p 8. 12 Angela Hale & Jane Wills (eds), Threads of Labour: Garment Industry Supply Chains from the Workers' Perspective, Oxford: Blackwell for WomenWorking Worldwide, 2005. See also websites of WomenWorking Worldwide, Central American Women's Network (cawn) and Clean Clothes Campaign (ccc). 13 Sally Smith & Catherine Dolan, 'Ethical trade: what does it mean for women workers in African horticulture?', in Barrientos & Dolan, Ethical Sourcing in the Global Food System. 14 Stephanie Barrientos & Sally Smith, The eti Code of Labour Practice: Do Workers really Benefit?, Brighton: ids, 2006, at www.ethicaltrade.org. 15 Marina Prieto, 'Corporate social responsibility in Latin America: Chiquita, women banana workers and structural inequalities', Journal of Corporate Citizenship, 21, 2006, pp 85 – 94. 16 Esther Schipper & Irene de Hahn, 'csr issues in the ict hardware manufacturing sector', somo ict Sector Report, Amsterdam: Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (somo), 2005, at www.somo.nl. 17 cafod, 'Clean up your computer: working conditions in the electronics sector', 2004, at http://www.cafod.org/uk. 18 cafod, 'Clean up your computer: progress report', 2006, at http://www.cafod.org/uk. 19 Bart Slob, 'Labor issues continue to blight computer industry', Corporate Responsibility Management, 2 (4), 2006, pp 14 – 15. 20 Ruth Pearson & Gill Seyfang, 'New hope or false dawn? Codes of conduct and social policy in a globalising world', Global Social Policy, 1 (1), 2001, pp 49 – 78. 21 Kate Raworth, Trading Away our Rights: Women Working in Global Supply Chains, Oxford: Oxfam International, 2004; and Ruth Pearson & Gill Seyfang, '"I'll tell you what I want …" Women workers and codes of conduct', in R Jenkins, R Pearson & G Seyfang, (eds), Corporate Responsibility & Labour Rights: Codes of Conduct in the Global Economy, London: Earthscan, 2002. 22 M Prieto, A Hadjipateras & J Turner, 'The potential of codes as part of women's organisations' strategies for promoting the rights of women workers: a central American Perspective', in Jenkins et al, Corporate Responsibility & Labour Rights, p 153. 23 But in spite of the fact that the code was recognised by the Ministry of Labour in 1999 – and at some point adopted by some 30 tncs working in the area, its influence has not been retained. Current wages and working conditions in Nicaragua are among the lowest in the region. See www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas. 24 N Cagatay, D Elson & C Grown, 'Introduction to special issue on gender, adjustment and macroeconomics', World Development, 23 (11), 1995, pp 1827 – 1836. 25 Stephanie Barrientos, Catherine Dolan & Anne Tallontire, 'A gendered value chain approach to codes of conduct in African horticulture', World Development, 31 (9), pp 1511 – 1526. 26 S Razavi & R Pearson, 'Globalization, export-oriented employment and social policy: gendered connections', in S Razavi, R Pearson & C Danloy (eds), Globalization, Export-oriented Employment and Social Policy: Gendered Connections, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004. 27 Susan Joekes famously observed that the workforce responsible for 'exports of manufactures from developing countries have been made up in the main by female labour. Industrialisation in the post-war period has been as much female led as export led'. Joekes, Women in the World Economy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p 81. 28 See G Standing, 'Global feminization through flexible labour', World Development, 17 (7), 1989, pp 1077 – 1095. 29 'Women and men in the informal economy', available from www.idrc.ca. 30 Alison McKewen Scott, 'Informal sector or female sector? Gender bias in urban labour market models', in Diane Elson (ed), Male Bias in the Development Process, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. 31 Jennifer Hurley with Doug Miller, 'The changing face of the global garment industry', in Hale & Wills, Threads of Labour, pp 16 – 39. 32 L Brill, 'Can codes of conduct help home-based workers?', in Jenkins et al, Corporate Responsibility and Labour Rights. 33 Barrientos & Smith, 'The eti code of labour practice'. 34 Smith & Dolan, 'Ethical trade'; unido, Industrial Development Report, Geneva: unido, 2004; and R Jenkins, Industry and Environment in Latin America, London: Routledge, 2002. 35 This includes high rates of miscarriage, infertility, and a higher than average incidence of still-born and severely ill and disabled children born to women who currently or previously worked at (mainly) electronics factories in the Northern Regional Industrial Estate in ChiangMai province, Thailand. See Sally Theobald, 'Occupational hazards in the electronics industry: gendered repercussions', Gender, Technology and Development, 2 (1), 1998, pp 89 – 96. 36 R Pearson, 'Gender perspectives on health and safety in information processing: learning from international experience', in Swasti Mitter & Sheila Rowbotham, Women Encounter Technology: Changing Patterns of Employment in the Third World, London: Routledge, 1995. 37 David Bacon, 'Stories from the borderlands', nacla Reports on the Americas, 39 (1), 2005, at http://www.nacla.org/art_display.php?art=2569#; and Vicky Funari & Sergio de La Torre, Maquilapolis: City of Factories, documentary film, USA/Mexico 2006, see www.maquilapolis.org/com/project. 38 Kate Grosser, & Jeremy Moon, 'Gender mainstreaming and corporate social responsibility: reporting workplace issues', No 27-2004 iccsr Research Paper Series, University of Nottingham, available at www.Nottingham.ac.uk/business/ICCSR. 39 For an early discussion of this issue, see Maureen Mackintosh, 'The sexual division of labour and the subordination of women', in Kate Young, Carol Wolkowitz & Roslyn McCullagh (eds), Of Marriage and the Market: Women's Subordination in International Perspective (first published cse Books 1981), London: Routledge, 1988. 40 D Williams & N Homedes, 'The impact of the maquiladoras on health and health policy along the US – Mexican border', Journal of Public Health Policy, 22 (3), 2001, pp 320 – 337; Anne Browning-Aiken, Margaret Wilding & Rebecca Carter, 'Disjuncture between Mexico's water policy and practice', paper presented at a workshop on 'Order and Destruction: The Organisation of Aid and Development', SOAS, London, September 2003. 41 The notion of the 'reproductive bargain' is explored in R Pearson, 'Renegotiating the reproductive bargain: the case of Cuba in the 1990s', Development and Change, 26 (4), 1997, pp 671 – 705. 42 Delia Davin, 'The impact of export-oriented manufacturing on the welfare entitlements of Chinese women workers', in Razavi et al, Globalization, Export-oriented Employment and Social Policy, pp 67 – 90. 43 The example of the Mexican murders is extreme. But there is considerable case study evidence in other locations of export production involving a concentration of young women workers that many are victims of murders and violent crime See Theobald, 'Occupational hazards in the electronics industry', for Thailand; and Amnesty International, 'Guatemala: no protection, no justice: killings of women in Guatemala', at http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGAMR340172005. For other countries, eg Bangladesh, see http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/s26/banglad/index.htm. Many workers have died as the result of fires and inadequate heath and safety conditions. See also Anita Chan, China's Workers Under Assault: The Exploitation of Labor in a Globalizing Economy, New York: ME Sharpe, 2002. 44 According to Julia Estela Monarrez Fragasso, 'La cultural del feminicidio en Ciudad Juarez', Frontera Norte, 12 (23), 2000, p 108, 68% of the 162 women found dead between 1990 and 1999 were aged 30 or under. A further 11.1% were aged between 31 and 40. 45 Mexico Solidarity Network/Red de Solidaridad con Mexico, Femicides in Ciudad Juarez, 2004, at www.mexicocolidarity.org/site/specialreprots/2004femicides. 46 Melissa Wright, Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism, New York: Routledge, 2006, p 51; and Diego Cevallos, 'Mexico: toll of murdered young women tops 3000', 2004, at www.corpwatch.org/article. 47 Cited in J Treat, 'Casa Amiga: leading the fight to protect women in Ciudad Juarez', Americas programme at ipc, 3 December 2002, p 2, at http://americas.irc-onliine.org. Monarrez claims that 655 of the victims for whom there was occupational information were maquiladora workers, sex or entertainment workers or students—fitting the general demographic characteristics of the maquiladora workers' age cohort. Monarrez, 'La cultura del femicidio'. 48 The same demographic workplace characteristics have been reported in export processing plants in South and Southeast Asia, other parts of Central America and increasingly in China and parts of Eastern Europe. S Razavi, 'Labour-intensive growth, poverty and gender', Development and Change, 30 (3), 1999, pp 409 – 433; and Razavi & Pearson, 'Globalization, export-oriented employment and social policy'. See also R Pearson, 'Female workers in the First and Third Worlds: the greening of women's labour', in R Pahl (ed), On Work, Oxford: Blackwell, 1988 for a discussion of the construction of cheap labour for export processing. 49 Cited in Treat, 'Casa Amiga', p 14. 50 'Thank God It's Friday' is a term commonly applied to end of working week social events. 51 R Pearson, 'Male bias and women's work in Mexico's border industries', in Diane Elson (ed), Male Bias in the Development Process, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. See also Pearson & Seyfang, "'I'll tell you what I want …'". 52 Ruth Pearson, 'Nimble fingers revisited: reflections on women and Third World industrialisation in the late twentieth century', in Cecile Jackson & Ruth Pearson, Feminist Visions of Development, London: Routledge, 1998. 53 Ruth Pearson and Sally Theobald, 'From export processing to erogenous zones: international discourses on women's work in Thailand', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 27 (4), 1999, pp 983 – 995. 54 M Brant, 'A message in murder: who's killing the young women of Juarez?', Newsweek, 10 October 1998, cited in Shae Garwood, 'Working to death: gender, labour and violence in Ciudad Juarez, Mexcio', Conflict and Development, 2, 2002, at www.peacestudiesjournal.org.uk. 55 See Garwood, 'Working to death'. 56 See D Elson & R Pearson, 'The subordination of women and the internationalisation of factory production', in K Young et al, Of Marriage and the Market, for discussion of the 'familial role' of factories. 57 Melissa Wright, 'From protests to politics: sex, work, women's worth and Ciudad Juarez modernity', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94 (2), 2004, p 378. 58 Ibid. 59 Elson & Pearson, 'The subordination of women'. 60 Ninety percent, according to Comite Fronterizo Obreros (cfo), 'Two maquiladora workers talk about violence against women in Ciudad Juarez', 8 July 2005, at www.cfomaquiladoras.org. 61 Treat, 'Casa Amiga'. 62 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, 'The situation of the rights of women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico: the right to be free from violence and discrimination', 7 March 2003, at www.cidh.oas.org. 63 Melissa Wright, 'Feminine villains, masculine heroes, and the reproduction of Ciudad Juárez', Social Text, 19 (4), 2001, p 98. 64 Gill Valentine, 'The geography of women's fear', Area, 21 (4), 1989, pp 385 – 390. 65 cfo, 'Two maquiladora workers talk about violence against women in Ciudad Juarez'. 66 Ibid. 67 See Wright, 'From politics to protest'; Julia Moralez Fragasso, 'Serial sexual femicide in Ciudad Juárez, 1993 – 2001', Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, 28 (2), 2003, pp 153 – 178; and Alicia R Schmidt Camacho, 'Ciudadana X: gender violence and the denationalization of women's rights in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico', cr: The New Centennial Review, 5 (1), 2006, pp 255 – 292. 68 R Pearson, 'The social is political: towards the re-politicising of feminist analysis of the global economy', International Journal of Feminist Politics, 6 (4), 2004, pp 603 – 622.