Women Workers, Industrialization, Global Supply Chains and Corporate Codes of Conduct

The restructured globalized economy has provided women with employment opportunities. Globalisation has also meant a shift towards self-regulation of multinationals as part of the restructuring of the world economy that increases among others things, flexible employment practices, worsening of labour conditions and lower wages for many women workers around the world. In this context, as part of the global trend emphasising Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the 1980s, one important development has been the growth of voluntary Corporate Codes of Conduct to improve labour conditions. This article reviews from a feminist interdisciplinary perspective the broad academic literature on women workers, covering the more classical debate on women workers in the industrialization process and entering into women workers in the global supply chains and women workers and corporate codes of conduct. The main argument is that this research on women workers is crucial to frame the issues of business ethics and in particular CSR and Codes of Conduct in the context of women in the global political economy. When this crucial knowledge is ignored, then the ethical policies of the companies also ignore the real situation of the women workers at the bottom of their supply chains. This article is based on my PhD on Nicaraguan women workers in factories (maquilas) and banana plantations and corporate codes of conduct (Prieto, 2006, unpublished).     

Women in the migrant economy. A positional approach to contextualize gendered transnational trajectories

ABSTRACT

Drawing on the life histories of migrant women entrepreneurs in the Netherlands and Spain, this article explores the influence of transnational trajectories on their social positions and business strategies. A translocational positional approach enables us to research the transnational strategies of women entrepreneurs more effectively in addition to examining the changes in social positions and gendered identities between the country of origin and the country of destination. This approach contributes to scholarship on ‘context’ by offering a transnational gendered dimension in relation to the effects of social, spatial and institutional factors. Our findings demonstrate how female migrant entrepreneurs redefine their social status in different contexts by establishing a business and challenge, contest or comply with gender relations in their transnational entrepreneurial journeys.     

Selling Together: The Benefits of Cooperatives to Women Honey Producers in Ethiopia

Smallholder farmers in developing countries encounter multiple barriers in access to inputs and technology, which prevent them from reaping the benefits from market participation. Women farmers face additional constraints due to gender norms that further limit their engagement in productive activities. While collective action has been shown to improve access to markets and economic outcomes for farmers overall, the evidence on the effects of cooperative membership for women smallholders remains limited. We investigate empirically the economic benefits of collective action for women farmers in the honey sector in Ethiopia. Relying on a rich data set on women honey producers, both cooperative members and non‐members, we evaluate the effects of belonging to a cooperative on three outcome variables through coarsened exact matching and regression analysis. Our results indicate that cooperative membership significantly increases the market price and the production quantity and, while the average effect on the share of product marketed is statistically insignificant, significant differences emerge for women with given characteristics. These results are shown to be robust to a number of tests that address biases from selection on observables and unobservables. An analysis of the heterogeneous effects of household membership in multiple groups finds that membership of self‐help groups or farmer associations amplifies the positive outcomes from belonging to a formal cooperative. Finally, qualitative findings derived from the same communities indicate self‐reported improvements in agency and self‐esteem among women members, thus reinforcing the importance of the quantitative findings.     

Resisting media marginalisation: Black women’s digital content and collectivity

ABSTRACT

Based on analysis of 23 interviews, this paper examines how social media and online content is implicated in the collective, resistant and transnational media experiences of Black women in Britain. It contributes to scholarship concerning race and the virtual marketplace by examining tensions between the countercultural, communal and commercial qualities of Black women’s online experiences. Drawing upon theorising of the oppositional spectator gaze of Black women, and narratives of technology consumption, we unpack how Black women’s digital activity can enable them to navigate the hegemony of US content, their marginalisation in British mass-media, and situate them within a Black experience that transcends Britain’s borders. Our work illustrates how Black women’s online encounters can be a source of resistance, Black digital commentary and community, as well as being subject to corporate co-optation. We conceptualise such online experiences as being shaped by transnational dimensions of the relationship between race, media and markets.     

Women Mayors and Management of Spanish Councils: An Empirical Analysis

This paper analyzes the relationship between the gender of mayors in Spanish local government and different budget items. It uses a sample of local budgets for 8,112 town councils between 2002 and 2010, totaling 64,361 observations. The Spanish context is characterized by decentralization of public responsibility to a greater extent than in neighboring countries, feeding the debate on the operational efficiency of local government and the importance of gender in public management. Results show that councils with women mayors have lower annual interest and debt repayment obligations and have higher expenditure on security, protection, and social promotion. Thus, the presence of women in politics may serve to improve councils’ economic situations, which is necessary not only for social justice but also for economic efficiency. In addition, in councils with more inhabitants, women mayors are more common, but women are less likely to occupy the office for longer periods.     

Researching the Opportunities and Challenges for Women in Supply Chain

In this editorial, we call attention to the underresearched issue of women in logistics and supply chain management. Despite growing interest in the field and the much recognized gap in talent, women remain underrepresented in the field—and particularly in the senior ranks. We explore some of the reasons offered in existing literature for this deficiency. While progress is noted, much work remains to be carried out. Rigorous research can be instrumental in illuminating the path forward. Possible avenues for research, including an array of research questions, are presented in this call for action.     

《夷坚志》中的劳动妇女

宋代是中国妇女生活由相对自由开放到日益遭受严格束缚的一个转折点，处于这一转折点上的宋代妇女，在坊市商品经济蓬勃发展的形势下，其生活比起理学盛行的明清要相对自由得多，表现在她们主动参与到手工业、商业及服务业等经济领域。《夷坚志》中记载的许多事例，展示了宋代妇女丰富多彩的经济生活。     

Examining the child’s impacts on single mothers’ leisure

With the majority of research on the experiences of single mothers focusing on motherhood as an inhibiting constraint to leisure, it is important to examine the ways in which motherhood might also enable the obtainment of a satisfactory leisure lifestyle. Our study employed a Foucauldian approach to understand constraints to leisure, in that we view constraints as always both inhibiting and enabling action. The purpose of this study was to explore three single mothers’ leisure experiences prior to and since becoming single mothers to identify the ways in which their child(ren) enables leisure practices as opposed to merely constraining them. The participants presented evidence of how their child(ren) altered both their priorities and their leisure preferences by providing them with opportunities to broaden their leisure experiences. Our research findings challenge dominant discourses that suggest that children can act only to inhibit leisure.     

INTRODUCTION / THE STATUS OF WOMEN ECONOMISTS IN US UNIVERSITIES AND THE WORLD / THE STATUS OF WOMEN ECONOMISTS IN UK UNIVERSITIES / THE STATUS OF WOMEN ECONOMISTS IN CANADIAN UNIVERSITIES / THE STATUS OF WOMEN ECONOMISTS IN CHINA'S UNIVERSITIES

Abstract

These Explorations, by eight authors from Canada, China, the US, and the UK, examine the current status of women in economics (with an eye mainly toward their status in the academic branch of the profession). The four sections of the work analyze results of surveys that show the distribution of academic positions among women economists in universities in Canada, the UK, the US, and China. The work also provides a short history of the development of committees and groups interested in furthering the status of women in the economics profession and suggests ways to improve the efforts of such groups and the status of women economists.     

A Feminist Comparative Economic Systems

Abstract

This study proposes that feminist research be integrated into the field of comparative economic systems (CES) and that CES return to its traditional institutionalist methodologies to facilitate more complete analyses of economic systems and feminist alternatives to these systems and institutions. The study describes the evolution of CES, drawing attention to an increasing reliance on econometric modeling that reflects a shift in focus away from systems. An inventory of research on women and gender that has appeared in CES journals and textbooks finds little on topics other than formal labor markets in transition economies. The study contrasts this literature on women and gender in transition economies to research on this topic by women from transition economies, a literature that CES journal authors do not reference. It concludes by proposing a feminist economics approach that focuses on gender-differentiated impacts of economic systems, analyses of households, and equity as a measure of progress.