Women have a critical role in sustaining the economy and in the development of trade. However, such role has long been invisible due to orthodox conceptions that have ignored the gender variable in ...commercial analyses. Today, it is generally accepted that neither the economy nor business are gender neutral and that the performance of these activities often impact negatively the lives of women. Women’s participation in trade, on equal terms as men, in any of the various possible roles ― producer, wage earner, consumer, merchant, taxpayer ― will not only favour the lives of women, but also the performance of the economies in which they participate. Transparency, as a principle of the multilateral trading system, can play a significant role as a strategy for the empowerment of women.
In Pakistan, cotton is picked by women who witness first-hand the social and environmental challenges of the global textile industry, which the BCI, a multi-stakeholder initiative (MSI), aims to ...mitigate. Scholars have yet to investigate the ability of MSIs to achieve change as experienced by the cotton-pickers themselves. This article offers an original perspective on how relational agency is exerted between an MSI, implementing partners and cotton-pickers, through the mutually interacting work of creating boundaries around an institutional space. This helps explain how, in an otherwise highly restrictive context, women’s agency is leveraged. Based on 40 qualitative interviews with the BCI cotton-pickers and their implementing partners, the study finds that, through institutional work, cotton-pickers have upgraded their working practices. However, the MSI’s impact depends on its ability to maintain its boundary and corresponding practices. By implication, the women’s poverty continues to be a highly significant limitation on the improvements to their lives.
This article examines whether and how the participation of women in the firm's board of directors and senior management enhances financial performance. We use the Fama and French (1992, 1993) ...valuation framework to take the level of risk into consideration, when comparing firm performances, whereas previous studies used either raw stock returns or accounting ratios. Our results indicate that firms operating in complex environments do generate positive and significant abnormal returns when they have a high proportion of women officers. Although the participation of women as directors does not seem to make a difference in this regard, firms with a high proportion of women in both their management and governance systems generate enough value to keep up with normal stock-market returns. These findings tend to support the policies currently being discussed or implemented in some countries and organizations to foster the advancement of women in business.
Taking as her subjects migrant Filipina domestic workers in Rome and Los Angeles, transnational migrant families in the Philippines, and Filipina migrant entertainers in Tokyo, Parrenas documents the ...social, cultural, and political pressures that maintain women's domesticity in migration, as well as the ways migrant women and their children negotiate these adversities.Parrenas examines the underlying constructions of gender in neoliberal state regimes, export-oriented economies such as that of the Philippines, protective migration laws, and the actions and decisions of migrant Filipino women in maintaining families and communities, raising questions about gender relations, the status of women in globalization, and the meanings of greater consumptive power that migration garners for women. The Force of Domesticity starkly illustrates how the operation of globalization enforces notions of women's domesticity and creates contradictory messages about women's place in society, simultaneously pushing women inside and outside the home.
In Israel, as in numerous countries of the global North, Filipina women have been recruited in large numbers for domestic work, typically as live-in caregivers for the elderly. The case of Israel is ...unique in that the country has a special significance as the 'Holy Land' for the predominantly devout Christian Filipina women and is at the center of an often violent conflict, which affects Filipinos in many ways. In the literature, migrant domestic workers are often described as being subject to racial discrimination, labour exploitation and exclusion from mainstream society. Here, the author provides a more nuanced account and shows how Filipina caregivers in Israel have succeeded in creating their own collective spaces, as well as negotiating rights and belonging. While maintaining transnational ties and engaging in border-crossing journeys, these women seek to fulfill their dreams of a better life. During this process, new socialities and subjectivities emerge that point to a form of global citizenship in the making, consisting of greater social, economic and political rights within a highly gendered and racialized global economy.
Unpredictability is a distinctive dimension of working time that has been examined primarily in the context of unplanned overtime and in male-dominated occupations. The authors assess the extent to ...which female employees in low-skilled retail jobs whose work schedules are unpredictable report greater work–life conflict than do their counterparts with more predictable work schedules and whether employee input into work schedules reduces work–life conflict. Data include measures from employee surveys and firm records for a sample of hourly female workers employed across 21 stores of a U.S. women's apparel retailer. Results demonstrate that, independent of other dimensions of nonstandard work hours, unpredictability is positively associated with three outcomes: general work–life conflict, time-based conflict, and strain-based conflict as measured by perceived employee stress. Employee input into work schedules is negatively related to these outcomes. Little evidence was found that schedule input moderates the association between unpredictable working time and work–life conflict.
Gender plays an important role in shaping outcomes of participation within Global Value Chains (GVCs). Employment in GVCs may potentially empower women, but little is known about the dynamics by ...which GVCs bring about empowerment, rather studies highlight women's rights abuses and on-going gender-based discrimination. This paper considers whether and how employment within GVCs empowers women workers. By drawing from an in-depth empirical study of women workers employed in the Kenyan tea and cut-flower industries, it develops three interlinked pathways to empowerment. These pathways, ‘being’, ‘doing’ and ‘sharing’, offer some positive changes from women workers' perspectives. In so doing, we offer a more nuanced perspective on employment for women in GVCs in African agriculture, acknowledging the constraints but also noting the potential for positive outcomes.
From the mid-nineteenth century, the Birmingham pen factories supplied the world with steel pens. The industry was completely reliant on the high productivity levels and compliance of its ...predominantly female workforce. Accounts written by nineteenth-century factory visitors lauded the clean light factories and the manufacturers' care for their employees. However, by piecing together factory inspector reports, oral accounts and union records, a different picture emerges. The women worked under relentless pressure, pay was poor, and a culture of fines and deductions prevailed. Physical and mental health problems were also commonplace, with women suffering debilitating injuries. The pen manufacturers amassed vast fortunes, and staunchly resisted regulation and the formation of a women's trade union in the 1890s, which threatened their lucrative business models. The reliance placed on accounts written by nineteenth-century commentators, and the image of respectability and benevolence they created has obscured the negative aspects of the women's employment.
‘Queen Bees’ are senior women in masculine organizational cultures who have fulfilled their career aspirations by dissociating themselves from their gender while simultaneously contributing to the ...gender stereotyping of other women. It is often assumed that this phenomenon contributes to gender discrimination in organizations, and is inherent to the personalities of successful career women. We argue for a social identity explanation and examine organizational conditions that foster the Queen Bee phenomenon. Participants were 94 women holding senior positions in diverse companies in The Netherlands who participated in an on‐line survey. In line with predictions, indicators of the Queen Bee phenomenon (increased gender stereotyping and masculine self‐descriptions) were found mostly among women who indicated they had started their career with low gender identification and who had subsequently experienced a high degree of gender discrimination on their way up. By contrast, the experience of gender discrimination was unrelated to signs of the Queen Bee phenomenon among women who indicated to be highly identified when they started their career. Results are discussed in light of social identity theory, interpreting the Queen Bee phenomenon as an individual mobility response of low gender identified women to the gender discrimination they encounter in their work.
2020 is a historic year due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus. As a result, people are forced to adapt to a new normal situation, which changes their daily lives order. In this condition, women ...are experiencing a double burden, including when men, as 'breadwinners', has experiencing the termination of employment (PHK) or decreasing in his income. There are various ways that women do for supporting their children and family needs. Such as being an unexpected worker. This study aims to provide an explanation on the meaning of being an unepected worker and gender relation changes using Bourdieu perspective. The research method employed is descriptive qualitative, using a case study. Data are collected through in-depth interviews, observation, and documentation. The results showed that the meaning of becoming an unexpected worker and the process of gender relations changes cannot be separated from the habitus of women. Work has economic and non-economic meaning when workers become impromptu workers. In the context of changing gender relations, the higher level of women education, the more parallel the gender relations are formed. Vice versa, the lower of their educations, the more domination of men in a gender relation. Tahun 2020 menjadi tahun bersejarah karena merebaknya virus Covid-19, akibatnya masyarakat mengubah tata cara kehidupan sehari-hari. Dalam kondisi ini, perempuan menjadi pihak yang harus bekerja ekstra, termasuk saat laki-laki sebagai 'income earner' mengalami Pemutusan Hubungan Kerja (PHK) atau pengurangan pendapatan. Berbagai cara dilakukan perempuan untuk anak dan kelangsungan keluarga, salah satunya dengan menjadi perempuan pekerja dadakan. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk memberi gambaran makna menjadi pekerja dadakan dan perubahan relasi gender yang terjadi denga menggunakan teori sosial Bourdeui. Metode penelitian yang digunakan penelitian kualitatif deskriptif dengan jenis studi kasus. Pengumpulan data dilakukan melalui wawancara mendalam, observasi dan dokumentasi. Hasil penelitian menunjukan makna menjadi pekerja dadakan dan perubahan relasi gender tersebut tidak lepas dari habitus perempuan. Terdapat makna ekonomi dan non-ekonomi saat perempuan menjadi pekerja dadakan. Dalam konteks perubahan relasi gender semakin tinggi tingkat pendidikan semakin sejajar relasi gender yang terbentuk. Begitu pula sebaliknya, semakin rendah tingkat pendidikan semakin perempuan didominasi oleh laki-laki dalam sebuah relasi gender.
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