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Liberalisation and Social
Structure:
The Case of Labour Intensive Export Growth in South Asia
Matthew McCartney (SOAS, University of London)
© Copyright 2004 Matthew
McCartney
Introduction
Neo-classical theorists argue that discrimination is impossible in a
competitive market economy. Any firm
or individual with a ‘taste for discrimination’ will be driven out of
business by lower cost competitors who employ, trade and produce according to
the criteria of profit and productivity maximisation. By this logic, free markets and free trade
will allow a developing country to exploit a comparative advantage in labour
intensive manufacturing and agro-processing.
Such labour intensive growth will inevitably draw women for the first
time into employment outside the home.
Employed women will achieve an independent income and higher social
status.
Neoclassical economics forgets
economics is a branch of social theory.
The outcome of liberalisation will be crucially dependent on the
social structure of values and institutions in which it occurs. Where there is a pre-existing ideology of
gender subordination (India and Pakistan) business has utilised this social
structure to cut costs and fragment formal labour institutions. More egalitarian Sri Lanka has witnessed
women being drawn into formal sector employment and receiving the benefits of
independence, mobility and independent income.
Liberalisation, Efficient Growth and
Labour Markets
In Neoclassical economics growth in a free market will reflect the
preferences of rational individuals, growth must then by definition be
efficient1, each exchange will reflect mutually beneficial gains
by optimising economic agents. ‘Getting the prices right’ will allow
developing countries to exploit a comparative advantage in labour-intensive
production and exports. Overvalued
exchange rates discriminate against labour-intensive agro-exports and reduce
the cost of imported capital goods.
Minimum wage and other labour ‘rights’ raise the cost of labour and
reduce the elasticity of employment with respect to output growth. Sometimes synonymous with removing ‘urban
bias’, liberalisation could be better described as removing capital bias.
Numerous authors have highlighted
labour market rigidities as being a key factor in explaining poor
developmental outcomes in India2.
Employment protection3 has hindered restructuring in union
dominated public sector enterprises.
It became more costly and time consuming for firms to adjust to
changing market conditions and absorb new technologies, legislation
encouraged firms to remain small and informal4, trading off access
to formal credit and scale economies in order to avoid the strictures of
labour legislation. Firms in declining
industries were prevented from shedding excess labour and piled up losses;
those in expanding industries were reluctant to hire new workers and so
substituted labour for capital. The
jobless growth in the 1980s is cited as evidence for this proposition. Minimal expansion of formal sector
employment between 1980 and 1989 coincided with an increase in annual
earnings per worker of 3.5% and large-scale substitution of labour for
capital5.
The supposed potential of
labour-intensive growth in South Asia is demonstrated by post-Mao China. China’s labour markets have proved highly
flexible in the non-state sector.
Formal sector employment increased rapidly from 95m in 1978 (9.7% of
the economically active population) to 148.5m in 1994 (19.2%). In India by contrast formal sector
employment has increased from only 22.9m in 1978 (6.8%) to 27.4m in 1994
(5.4%)6.
Labour Intensive Export Growth and Gender
The crucial ‘optimistic’
Neoclassical assumption is that markets reflect mutually beneficial voluntary
exchange. The spread of markets is
thus by assumption proof that the economy is becoming more efficient.
Discrimination in the sense of paying workers of identical productivity
different wages will not persist over the long term in a capitalist
economy. Any employer refusing to
employ workers on the base of colour, creed, gender or caste will be less
profitable than a non-discriminatory rival.
Over time the dynamics of competition will drive out those with a
‘taste for discrimination’, the logic of the market will separate
discrimination from the process of production. In a broader sense the dictates of the
market separate society from the economy.
“The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all
feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations.
It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man
to his ‘natural superiors’, and has left remaining no other nexus between man
and man than naked self-interest, than callous cash payment’7.
‘Female Employment Intensive’ Growth
Historically labour intensive export growth has been associated in many
instances with a disproportionate increase in the employment of women. In the textile mills of nineteenth century
Britain, silk weaving in 1920s Japan, and electronics factories in the
post-war Tiger economies. Wood8
found a strong relationship between increased exports and increased female
employment in manufacturing, the largest increases occurring in Mauritius,
Tunisia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and the East Asian Tiger Economies. In Export Processing Zones (EPZs) most labour is female, eighty percent in the
Caribbean and the Philippines; this bias is especially strong in the garments
sector9.
Drawing women into the formal labour
market will improve their economic status and social position. The relative respect and regard of women is
strongly influenced by their ability to earn an independent income, being
employed outside the home and having ownership rights. These factors are linked by the positive
impact they have on strengthening women’s voice and agency through
independence and empowerment. With
independent waged employment the contribution of the woman to the family’s
well-being is more visible, she is less dependent on others, the exposure to
ideas outside the home makes her agency more effective10. An ability to seek employment outside the
home can contribute to the reduction of women’s relative and absolute
deprivation.
Really Existing Markets
Neoclassical economists
are quick to generalise this optimistic scenario to support an exclusive
focus on liberalisation. However,
re-rooting economics as social theory reveals such outcomes to be context
dependent. Markets as they really
exist do not accord to this hypothesised ideal, rather, they are embedded in
wider social structures of values and institutions.
“Real markets are permeated by power relations of various kinds; they are
embedded in social processes which may, for example, involve class
exploitation or gender subordination; and they are saturated by divergent
institutions, ideologies, ethical and cultural values.11”
The idea that liberalisation will remove politics from the economy and lead
to a more rational and efficient allocation of resources is false. Markets are not politically neutral but are
embedded in social structures. Just as
government intervention can be distorted by an underlying political economy
so too can markets. There is no neat dichotomy between state-regulation and
market, rather both are meshed into existing social structures of (among
others) caste, religion and gender12 in South Asia.
Liberalisation can remove market constraints but not structural constraints
such as patriarchal values that prevent equal access of men and women to
markets. These are not just
imperfections of the market but deep-rooted characteristics of society13.
Social Construction of Gender in India
In India employers have
utilised a pre-existing and intensifying ideology of gender subordination to
undermine male unionised labour and replace it with low cost ruralised, casualised, and informalised female labour. In 1985, 250,000 people were employed in
the Bombay textile mills, by 1996 this had declined to only 54,000. Women then constituted only 0.01% of the
cotton mill workforce while accounting for more than 45% of the unorganised
cotton handloom sector14.
The social environment in which ‘labour intensive’ growth occurs is a crucial
determinant of its net impact on women’s agency. The missing factor to be
controlled for is the pre-existing social structure of gender relations. The experiences of Sri Lanka and Pakistan
offer sharply contrasting responses to liberalisation.
Sri Lanka and Pakistan: Empowerment
and Exploitation
Sri Lanka has had
traditionally good human development indicators, a 90% plus literacy rate
and, compared with other developing countries, minimal gender disparity in
education15. There has been
a persistent upward trend in the educational attainment of males and females.
Female literacy in 1995 was 87%, only marginally lower than that of men. In this context, of relatively equal gender
relations liberalisation has had an empowering impact.
Liberalisation policies were initiated in 1977. By the early 1980s there was
economic growth of slightly under 6% per annum. The fastest growing sectors since 1977 have
been unskilled labour intensive manufactures, mainly garments and
textiles. The structure of exports has
indeed shifted towards Sri Lanka’s comparative advantage. The institution behind this growth has been
mushrooming Export Processing Zones (EPZ’s)16,
set up in 1978, 1984 and 1990. 80% of
the employment in EPZ’s is female. The female-male ratio in manufacturing has
increased from 25% to 80% between 1963 and 1985, total employment of women in
manufacturing increased by 50% between 1977 and 199517.
In Pakistan by contrast, gender relations have historically been highly
unequal, the sex ratio at 910 being even lower than that of India. Literacy, school enrolment and a
persistently high fertility rate all point to the low status of women. Female primary school attendance is around
35%, among the lowest in the world.
Female labour force participation is only 3.5% and represents severe crowding
into low pay, low-skill occupations18. The labour market is also highly segmented,
especially in urban areas where there is also widespread segregation between
sexes.
The structure of modern industry in Pakistan is similar to that of Sri Lanka,
consisting mainly of labour intensive processing of agricultural products as
well as textiles and clothing. In
1992/93 textiles and garments accounted for 64% of total export revenue19. However on a pre-existing base of gender
discrimination the gender composition of employment in textiles and garments
is very different. In Pakistan it is a
male intensive sector; 88.3% of urban textile manufacturing workers are men.
As in India there is evidence of widespread contracting by garment
enterprises that employ poor and young women.
Most of this work is done in informal sector workshops or home based
work. Such work by itself will have
little impact on bargaining strength or increasing the social status of
women. In fact there may be a
contradictory impact by implicitly devaluing the implied worth of unpaid
domestic employment and further marginalising those women without paid
external employment.
“[I]n South Asian countries, women are rarely able or willing to work outside
the marital home. In that case, wage
work outside the house increases her work load because she is not in a position
to bargain with others about sharing her housework.20”
Gender and Fragmentation of Labour in India
Structural adjustment in
the 1990s has given impetus to the long-term trend of increasing market
relations in South Asia. There has
been no long-term improvement in the status of women in Pakistan or
India. The logic of capital is not
dissolving discrimination but working within the social structure of a
pre-existing gender ideology and intensifying
female disadvantage.
Female-Male (population) ratios have been declining in India since the
beginning of this century. The 1991
Census showed a further decline in this ratio to 927 women for every 1000 men21. Mortality levels of women are abnormally
high from birth until the mid-30s. Increased urbanisation, modernisation and
economic growth have not improved these trends. In fact the lowest ratios are recorded in
the richest states, Haryana and the Punjab. Using the ratio for Sub-Saharan Africa, Dreze and Sen22 calculated there were
approximately 37 million missing women in India in 198623.
Economic change is working within a
social structure of female disadvantage.
The north Indian pattern of anti-female discrimination is spreading
southwards by means of cultural assimilation, and is not being undermined by
economic change. Even in North India
there is a pronounced process of Sansrikisation24. The dominant castes in the north are the
martial and patriarchal Rajputs and Jats.
Traditionally they have a pronounced gender division and obsession with
honour. Honour is to a large extent a
function of the conservative behaviour of women25. Lower castes in the north have been
traditionally more equal, female-male ratios among tribes and Scheduled
castes having long been significantly higher.
Over time lower castes have been emulating, not opposing, the ideology
of dominant castes. Practices such as
restrictions on widow re-marriage and dowry have been diffusing down the
caste hierarchy. The fall in
female-male ratios has been generated by a convergence of ratios in lower
castes to those of dominant castes26.
Conclusion
Liberalisation is context
dependent, not a neutral and deterministic process. The social structure within which
liberalisation occurs has a crucial impact on outcomes.
Despite having levels of female disadvantage of a similar if not worse
magnitude to India and Pakistan, throughout the 1990s Bangladesh has enjoyed
rapid labour (female) intensive employment growth in the export-orientated
textiles sector. There is evidence to
support the proposition that a prior restructuring of social relations (by
NGOs among others) has enabled this favourable outcome27.
Economics is social theory. Neoclassical theory forgets social
structure at the cost of relevance.
Notes
1. For a longer exposition see Matthew McCartney, ‘Driving
a car with no steering wheel and no road map: Neoclassical discourse and the case of
India’, Post-Autistic
Economics Review, 21, 13 September (2003) article 5, http://www.btinternet.com/~pae_news/review/issue21.htm
2. See for example Peter R.Fallon and Robert Lucas,
‘Job Security Regulations and the Dynamic Demand for Labour in India and
Zimbabwe’, Journal of Development
Economics, 40 (1993), pp. 241-75; Roberto Zagha,
‘Labour and India’s Economic Reforms’, in J.D.Sachs,
A.Varshney and N.Bajpai (eds) India in the
Era of Economic Reforms (Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 160-185; Montek S. Ahluwalia, ‘Economic
Reforms in India Since 1991: Has Gradualism Worked?’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol
16 No.3 (2002), pp. 67-88; Timothy Besley and Robin
Burgess, ‘Can Labour Market Hinder Economic Performance? Evidence from
India’, LSE, STICERD
Working Paper No.33.
3. The 1976 amendment to the Industrial Disputes Act required state
government permission to carry out any retrenchments in a firm of more than
three hundred employees. An amendment
in 1982 reduced this figure to one hundred.
The constitutional validity of this change was challenged and the
second reform reintroduced as a constitutional amendment in 1984, Zagha ‘Labour and
India’s Economic Reforms’.
4. Only 7% of a labour force approaching 390m are in the organised sector
subject to social security and labour laws.
5. R. Nagaraj ‘Organised Manufacturing Employment’,
Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 35, No 38 (2000), pp. 3445-8.
6. Nirupam Bajpai,
‘Sustaining High Rates of Economic Growth in India’ Harvard Centre for International Development, Working Paper, No
65, March (2001).
7. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ‘The Communist Manifesto’, (Penguin,
1967), pp82.
8. Adrian Wood, ‘North-South Trade and
Female Labour in Manufacturing: An Asymmetry’, Journal of Development
Studies, Vol 27, No. 2 (1991).
9. Martin Rama ‘Globalisation and Workers in
Developing Countries’, World Bank
Development Research Group, Working Paper No. 2958 (2003), pp. 15.
10. Amartya .Sen, ‘Development as Freedom’, (Oxford
University Press, 1999), Ch 8.
11. Gordon White, ‘The Political Analysis of Markets: Editorial
Introduction’, Institute of Development Studies Bulletin, Vol
24, No 3 (1993) pp. 1.
12. Barbara Harriss-White, India Working: Essays on Society and Economy, (Cambridge
University Press, 2003).
13. Indira Hirway ,
Economic Reforms and Women’s Work’, in Employment’
in T.S.Papola and A.N.Sharma
‘Gender and Employment in India’, (Vikas, 1999), pp 356.
14. Ushma Upadhyay
‘India’s New Economic Policy of 1991 and its Impact on Women’s Poverty and
AIDS’ Vol 6, No. 3, Feminist Economics, (2000), pp.108.
15. Marzia Fontana, Susan Joekes
and Rachel Masika, ‘Global Trade Expansion and
Liberalisation: Gender Issues and Impacts’, Briefings on Development and Gender, Report No. 42, University of
Sussex (1998), pp.23.
16. An EPZ is geographical location where foreign
and/ or local investors are allowed to set up 100% export-orientated
facilities, usually an array of incentives are granted such as tax holidays,
access to duty free imported inputs and superior infrastructure.
17. Wood, ‘North-South Trade and Female Labour in Manufacturing: An
Asymmetry’, pp. 168-89.
18 Shahid. J. Burki,
‘Pakistan: Fifty Years of Nationhood’, Third Edition, (Westview,
1999), Ch 4.
19. Fontana et al, ‘Global Trade
Expansion and Liberalisation: Gender Issues and Impacts’, pp. 25.
20. Nirmala Banerjee ‘How Real is the Bogey of Feminisation?’
in T.S.Papola and A.N.Sharma
‘Gender and Employment in India’, (Vikas, 1999), pp. 314.
21. Satish.B.Agnihotri, ‘Missing Females: A
Disaggregated Analysis’, Economic and
Political Weekly (1995), 19th Aug.
22. Jean Dreze and Amartya
Sen, ‘India:
Economic Development and Social Opportunity’, (Oxford University Press,
1995), pp. 141.
23. There are a number of explanations for these disturbing trends, see Harriss-White, ‘India
Working: Essays on Society and Economy’.
24. A process whereby lower castes emulate the practise and rituals of higher
castes.
25. See Jean Dreze and Haris
Gazdar, ‘Uttar
Pradesh: The Burden of Inertia’, in J,Dreze and
A.Sen (eds), ‘Indian Development: Selected Regional
Perspectives’, (Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 33-128.
26. The female-male ratio among the dominant Rajput
caste has remained stable at 890 for most of this century, there has been a
general convergence among lower castes to this ‘standard’.
27. See Petra Dannecker, ‘Between Conformity and
Resistance: Women Garment Workers in Bangladesh’, (The University Press
Limited, 2002).
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SUGGESTED
CITATION:
Matthew McCartney, “Liberalisation and Social
Structure: The Case of Labour Intensive Export Growth in South Asia”, post-autistic
economics review, issue no. 23, 5 January 2004, article 3, http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue23/McCartney23.htm
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