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SS-119
Modern Capitalism
their production overseas. Multinationals undergo the expenses of this move to lower the costs
of production in the long run either by lowering the cost of labor, improving production rates, or
a combination of these two goals. While this process lowers the production cost of clothing and
other such commodities, it does so by underpaying and abusing the already impoverished work-
ers in third world countries. These workers are predominantly female: over seventy percent of
workers in export-processing zones in South Korea and Guatemala are female, and woman make
up over eighty percent of the workforce in the export-processing zones of Mexico, Taiwan, Sri
Lanka, Malaysia and the Philippines1. There are many misconceptions about the plight of wo-
men workers in the modern capitalist market, many of which have been created by the Multina-
tional Corporations that benefit from them. In the modern capitalist system, women workers in
Multinational Corporations are oppressed first by the inequality of capitalism, and then by the
CEOs and public representatives of Multinational Corporations maintain that factory jobs
provide women with an opportunity that would otherwise be unavailable to them. They posit
that factory jobs provide women with financial independence and supply these women with
spending money. While this is occasionally partially true in some cultures, in the majority of
cultures it is not. In Java young female workers are provided with spending money, but they are
in no way financially independent from their families. Although Java factory girls usually keep
nearly all of their spending money for themselves, and occasionally even ask their parents for ad-
1 Padavic and Reskin, Women and Men at Work, (New York: Pine Forge Press, 2002) Pg. 33
ditional money, their meager salaries provide them with barely enough for a few creature com-
forts. In Java most families buy blocks of unscented soap, and in the poorer households a single
block of soap will be used for washing dishes, doing laundry, and bathing. Factory girls often
use their money to purchase bars of scented soap for bathing, but the price of these small bars
alone is more than half a days wages2. The jobs that are provided by Multinational Corporations
in Java supply their employees with spending money, but the pay is so meager that this money is
unable to make a significant difference in employees’ living conditions despite the long hours
Javanese women's ability to keep their earnings rather than support the family as a whole
is a rare phenomenon. In Taiwan daughters give fifty to eighty percent of their earnings back to
the family, and in China this percentage jumps to fifty to one hundred percent3. In these coun-
tries women generally have much less control over where or even whether they work in Multina-
tional Corporations. In Taiwan parents often decide for their daughters when they will stop
schooling and where and when they will start working4. The owners of Multinational Corpora-
tions propose that women are pulled into factory work because it is an attractive offer. As Kung
and Greenhalgh demonstrate, factory girls often do not make the choice to work, but have this
work pushed upon them by a desperate and destitute family. Even when women do make their
own choice to enter into factory work they are paid miniscule wages and often work under awful
conditions.
Multinational Corporations claim to provide better working conditions and wages than
employment opportunities offered by employers from host countries. It is true that incomes of
2 Diane L. Wolf, The Women, Gender & Development Reader, (London and New Jersey: Zed Books LTD,
1997) Pg. 124
3 Diane L. Wolf, The Women, Gender & Development Reader, (London and New Jersey: Zed Books LTD,
1997) Pg. 124/126
4 Kung(1981 and 1983) Greenhalgh(1985)
those who work in Multinational Corporations tend to be higher than those who work for em-
ployers of the same nationality or country, and that women usually prefer employment in Mul-
tinational Corporations, but in Multinational Corporations workers are more exploited and have
less job security. This lack of job security comes from Multinational Corporations’ ability to
production less profitable5. This means that if government regulations would improve the work-
ing conditions, hours or wages of factory workers, Multinational Corporations would most likely
move to a different country where these regulations were not in place. This ability to move also
makes the success of strikes and unions nearly impossible. Multinational Corporations obliterate
the bargaining power of the worker by utilizing a worldwide surplus of labor, leaving employees
at the whim of corporate interest with no security in their job or consequently any monetary as-
pect of their lives. Even when labor markets tighten, Multinational Corporations simply import
Multinational Corporations offer higher wages and better working conditions than em-
ployers from the host countries, but these wages and working conditions are still much worse
than in the Multinationals’ home countries. In fact, few benefits other than the meager wages of
employees are left on foreign soil. Multinationals provide few transferable skills to their work-
ers, making them dependent on a job void of dependability; imperialist corporations rely heavily
on foreign capital, technology and markets, and they do not provide any prospect of improve-
ment in job quality or pay; many Multinational Corporations, especially those within free trade
zones, have made unions illegal; few taxes are paid within the country where employees live;
5 Linda Y.C. Lim, The Women, Gender & Development Reader, (London and New Jersey: Zed Books
LTD, 1997) Pg. 219
6 Linda Y.C. Lim, The Women, Gender & Development Reader, (London and New Jersey: Zed Books
LTD, 1997) Pg. 226
and the giant profits that are accrued through the exploitation of third world workers are nearly
completely transfered oversees7. While when viewed in the immediate sense working conditions
and wages of employees at Multinational Corporations are better than in national corporations,
the lack of job security and lack of economic improvement in the host country make conditions
Young women are targeted for employment in Multinational Corporations for a number
of reasons, but these reasons are deliberately misconstrued by the CEOs and spokespeople of im-
perialist companies. CEOs and spin doctors attempt to convince the public that women are em-
ployed because they have naturally “nimble fingers” and are “consistent workers.” In reality,
women’s fingers are no more naturally nimble than is the ability to ride a bicycle, and what
CEOs mean when they say that women are “consistent workers” is that they believe women to be
docile and submissive. Both of these beliefs are wrong. Women are thought to have “naturally”
nimble fingers because from a very early age they have been taught by their mothers’ and grand-
mothers’ to sew, cook and clean, all endeavors that require dexterity8. By proposing that women
are “naturally” nimble fingered, the Multinational Corporations are able to call the work women
do in factories unskilled labor, despite the fact that women have been trained for such work for
most of their lives. This was illustrated in Malaysian electronics and Malawi textile factories
where mail productivity was lower than female productivity in the same plants9. Women are
thought to be docile and submissive because patriarchal society has trained them to act in this
way. In fact, as was observed by Heyzer (1978) in a textile factory in Singapore, women work-
7 Linda Y.C. Lim, The Women, Gender & Development Reader, (London and New Jersey: Zed Books
LTD, 1997) Pg. 218
8 Diane Elson and Ruth Pearson, The Women, Gender & Development Reader, (London and New Jer
sey: Zed Books LTD, 1997) Pg. 193
9 Diane Elson and Ruth Pearson, The Women, Gender & Development Reader, (London and New Jer
sey: Zed Books LTD, 1997) Pg. 1923
ers remain on guard and characteristically subservient in the presence of their supervisors, but go
as far as to mock and ridicule them when they are not present. Female docility and subservience
can be seen turned on its head in South Korea, where six hundred female workers occupied the
Wuonpoong factory in a sit-in hunger strike. This strike was only ended when gangs of men and
police officers stormed the factory, hospitalizing one hundred women10. One of the major reas-
ons for the employment of women in Multinational Corporations is avoided if possible by CEOs
and spokespeople when the topic is broached. Women are paid less than men. Multinationals try
to explain this away by saying that women are not primary providers and thus need less money
than men, but this is often not the case. Multinational Corporations hire people who are in posi-
tions that are particularly vulnerable to exploitative labour practices, meaning that they are in
desperate need of the job and will not rock the boat. The prime worker is one who is young,
poor, heads a household and is the sole support of her children. In the apparel industry ma-
quiladoras, about one-third of the women workers head households and are the sole support of
their children. Women are targeted for employment in Multinational Corporations because they
are already skilled workers, they need the jobs too desperately to make trouble, and they are
from a patriarchal system, but this is simply not true. Capitalism’s primary goal is the creation of
wealth for those who are already wealthy enough to invest in capital. Patriarchy and gender sub-
ordination provide cheap labor for those with capital, and these institutions have been used to un-
derpay women throughout the history of Multinational Corporations. Besides utilizing patri-
archy to lower wages, Multinationals also provide an incentive for fathers to exert more control
10 Maud and David Easter, “Women Fight Back,” Multinational Monitor Volume 4, November 8, 1983
over their daughters by sending them to work in factories whether they wish to or not11. While it
has been argued that the ability to earn a wage gives women more freedom, in most third world
countries women do not gain greater status within the family or more decision-making power
with the advent of their wages. Even within the workforce women are denigrated to lower posi-
tions than men almost without exception. In the rare occasions when women do rise in their
jobs, it is usually to replace men who have moved to even higher positions. Even when women
In theory capitalism should create an even market where those who produce best are paid
the most, but this no longer occurs. With the emergence of globalization the balance between the
Bourgeois and Proletariat has been knocked completely off kilter. Multinational Corporations
now can move wherever they please, stripping the proletariat of their power as the limited labor
force. This has hurt women the most. As the inferior sex due to thousands of years of patriarchy,
women are first brought to their knees by the whip of capitalism and then pushed lower by the
11 Diane Elson and Ruth Pearson, The Women, Gender & Development Reader, (London and New Jer
sey: Zed Books LTD, 1997) Pg. 199
12 Linda Y.C. Lim, The Women, Gender & Development Reader, (London and New Jersey: Zed Books
LTD, 1997) Pg. 226
Bibliography
Fuentes, Annette, and Barbara Ehrenreich. "The New Factory Girls." Multinational Monitor Aug.
1983.
Reskin, Barbara F., and Irene Padavic. Women and Men at Work. New York: Pine Forge P, 2002.
Visvanathan, Nalini, Lynn Duggan, Laurie Nisonoff, and Nan Wiegersma. The Women, Gender
& Development Reader. London and New Jersey: Zed Books LTD, 1997.