According to the United Nations in 1997, of the worlds 1.3 billion poor people, almost 70 percent are women. In many countries, women work twice the unpaid time men do. They are overrepresented in sweated labour undertaken for transnational chains and are more likely to accept poor wages and conditions, perhaps to some extent because of their responsibility for their children. The implications of structural adjustment and globalisation on women have been typically negative in terms of reduced real incomes and standard of living. This goes along with a larger load of unpaid work. Even in developed countries like Australia women’s total average earnings are just 66 percent of men’s. This is even less than they were ten years ago.
Although organisations like the United Nations and Amnesty International try to reduce women’s poverty and bad place in society, policies are sometimes not changed enough or not at all. Shah even argues in her article about women rights that equality between men and women are not getting better and even get worse.
The globalised world has made a change to more knowledge intensive production and has created new jobs. Nevertheless, women increasingly have to challenge with vulnerable forms of employment. The opening up of the market to foreign trade has meant a loss of the rights of the socialist state system. This system protected women in transition economies, but because of globalising this system does not protect the women anymore.
So, if globalising reduces poverty, women are the ones who are excluded from the benefits of globalisation. Opening up to foreign trade makes women more vulnerable and reduces the incomes and standard of living for women. Poverty for women means poverty for their children and their children are our future. To create a better life for women and their children in a globalising world, women should be treaded equal to men.
Bibliography
Dollar, David and Aart Kraay, ‘Spreading the wealth’, Foreign Affairs (January/February 2002)
Shah, Anup, ‘Women’s Rights’ (2010), at , accessed 12 August 2010
Summers, Anne, ‘The end of equality: work, babies and women’s choices in 21st century Australia’, Random House, Milson’s Point N.S.W., 2003, pp. 26-259
United Nations, ‘Women at a Glance’ (1997), at , accessed 21 August 2010
United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Passific, ‘Women and globalisation’, at , accessed 21 August 2010
David Dollar and Aart Kraay, ‘Spreading the wealth’, Foreign Affairs (January/February 2002)
Anup Shah, ‘Women’s Rights’ (2010), at , accessed 12 August 2010
United Nations, ‘Women at a Glance’ (1997), at , accessed 21 August 2010
United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Passific, ‘Women and globalisation’, at , accessed 21 August 2010
Anne Summers, ‘The end of equality: work, babies and women’s choices in 21st century Australia’, Random House, Milson’s Point N.S.W., 2003, pp. 26-259
Anup Shah, ‘Women’s Rights’ (2010), at , accessed 12 August 2010
