We Own Our Lives: Economic Justice, Global Politics and Capitalist Scripts

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We Own Our Lives Economic Justice, Global
Politics and Capitalist Scripts

• Sujata Warrier, PhD
• E-mail sujata-warrier_at_att.net

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We are doing ..?

• We have a record
• 482 billionaires. Record foreclosures
• 482 billionaires. 47 million without health
  insurance
  
• 482 billionaires. 5 million below the poverty
  line
  

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We are doing ..?

• In 1982,
• the highest paid CEO made 108 million and the
  average full-time worker made 34,199, adjusted
  for inflation in 2006.
  
• Last year,
• the highest paid hedge fund manager hauled in
  1.7 billion, the highest paid CEO made 647
  million, and the average worker made 34,861,
  with vanishing health and pension coverage.

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We are doing ..?

• The 400 richest Americans have a conservatively
  estimated 1.54 trillion in combined wealth. That
  amount is more than 11 percent of our 13.8
  trillion Gross Domestic Product (GDP) - the total
  annual value of goods and services produced by
  our nation of 303 million people.

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We are doing ..?

• The top 1 percent of households - average income
  1.5 million - will save a collective 79.5
  billion on their 2008 taxes, reports Citizens for
  Tax Justice. That's more than the combined
  budgets of the Transportation Department, Small
  Business Administration, Environmental Protection
  Agency and Consumer Product Safety Commission.

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We are doing ..?

• Tax cuts will save the top 1 percent a projected
  715 billion between 2001 and 2010. And cost us
  715 billion in mounting national debt plus
  interest.

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Womens Work Exposed A Snapshot

• Globally, women earn 20-30 less than men. (ILO)
• Women remain at the end of the segregated labor
  market and continue to be concentrated in a few
  occupations, to hold positions of little or no
  authority, and to receive less pay than men.
  (UNDESA)
• Womens unpaid household labor accounts for about
  1/3rd of the worlds economic production. (UNFPA)

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Womens Work Exposed A Snapshot

• In developing countries, womens work hours are
  estimated to exceed mens by 30. (UNFPA)
  
• Whereas men are more likely to be hired in core
  and better-paid positions, women are increasingly
  hired in peripheral, insecure, less-valued jobs
  including home-based, casual and temporary work.
  (ILO)
• At times of economic crisis, women are the first
  to withdraw from wage and salaried work they may
  be forced to enter the informal economy as a
  result. (ILO)

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Womens Work Exposed A Snapshot

• Women are working, but poverty is not being
  eradicated of the 550 million working poor in
  the world, approx, 330 million are women.
  
• Women make up 85 of the workforce in
  Bangladeshs garment sector (75 of the countrys
  export earnings). These women migrate from rural
  areas, seeking cash employment, independence and
  better opportunities. They work 11-16 hours/day,
  7 days a week and are paid 1.54/day

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Womens Work Exposed A Snapshot

• In Chile, 75 of women in the agricultural sector
  are on temporary contracts picking fruit, working
  more than 60hours.week during the season and earn
  less than minimum wages. (Oxfam)
• In the US, 33 of low-wage working women did not
  have paid sick leave in 2000 45 in 2004.
  (CSM)
  
• 1.6 million women work for Wal-Mart, the largest
  private sector employer in the US. A class
  action lawsuit brought against the retailer
  alleges systemic bias against women in pay and
  promotion. (CSM)

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Womens Work Exposed A Snapshot

• In Kenya, interviews with 400 women working on
  coffee and tea plantations and in textile plants
  reveal that 90 had experienced or witnessed
  sexual abuse. (CSM)
• In Chinas Guangdong province, young women face
  150 hours of overtime/every month 60 have no
  written contracts, 90- have no access to social
  insurance. (Oxfam)

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Intersecting Webs

• Four intersecting webs in the global commercial
  arena
  
• The global cultural bazaar which creates and
  disseminates images and dreams through films, tv,
  radio, music and other media,
  
• The global shopping mall a planetary
  supermarket that sells things to eat, drink, wear
  and enjoy through advertising, distribution and
  marketing networks,
• The global workplace a network of factories and
  workplaces where goods are produced, information
  processed and services rendered,
  
• The global financial network the international
  traffic in currency transactions, global
  securities etc.

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Intersecting Webs

• In each of these webs, racialized ideologies of
  masculinity, femininity and sexuality play a role
  in constructing the legitimate consumer, worker
  and manager.
• Meanwhile the psychic and social
  disenfranchisement and impoverishment of women
  continue.
  
• Womens bodies and labor are used to construct
  dreams, desires and ideologies of success and the
  good life.

Richard Barnet and John Cavanagh. 1994. Global
Dreams Imperial Corporations and the New World
Order. New York Simon and
Schuster pp. 25-41
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(No Transcript)
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The everyday world
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A web of agencies and political entities make up
Institutions of Social Management (ISMs)
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Regulatory bodies and economic systems shape the
functioning of the ISMs
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Discourse and Dominant Ideologies
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In conclusion

• Promoting gender-sensitive economic policies is
  not only about establishing safety-nets. It is
  primarily about ensuring that there will be no
  need for safety nets. In this regard, a feminist
  approach would posit that sound and equitable
  policies require men and women to have equal
  access to, and control over, productive
  resources, equal participation in decision
  making, and equal distribution of the benefits of
  their work.
• Zo Randriamaro

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In conclusion

• It seems utopian, but the world must recover its
  capacity for dreaming and in order to start, a
  new economic paradigm is required..
  
• Cecilia Lopez