The Double Register of History Wilma Dunaway

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The Double Register of HistoryWilma Dunaway

• FOCUS
• To Engender World-System Analysis
• And
• Overlay the double register of history
• Presentation by Adam Sgrenci

2
Summary

• W-S Theory essential to analyze capitalisms
  exploitation of women
• Failed to do so (mech/material input)
• Engender Wallersteins concepts of the
  semiproletarianized household and commodity chain
  networks
• Identify Hidden Inputs
• (a) the bearing and raising of children
• (b) shadow work that generates the
  familys survival requirements
• (c) inter-node subsidies
• Identify Externalized Costs
• (a) ecological/health risks
• (b) cultural disruption
• (c) unpaid labor (of which the woman is doubly
  exploited)
• (d) feminization of poverty
• Questions will focus on these externalized costs
  of capitalism, those concepts remaining unexposed
  through W-S models

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Questions

• Supporting Argument
• Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale
• Maria Mies
• Explains the externalized costs of capitalism to
  women
• V.
• Alternate Argument
• Women in the Family and the Economy
• Ratna Ghosh and George Kurian
• Notion of capitalism as sole system of the
  exploitation of women will be opposed

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1. Is the first subsidy to capitalism made by
women?
SA Y. If we keep in mind that productivity
means the specific capacity of human beings to
produce and reproduce life in an historic
process, then we can formulate for our further
analysis the thesis that female productivity is
the precondition of male productivity and of all
further world-historic development. (58)

• WD Y. The biological reality of womens lives is
  sexual and reproductive thus, mothers make their
  first subsidy to capitalism through the bearing
  and raising of successive generations of
  laborers.
• (14)

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2. Does capitalism use the housewife in order to
externalize costs?
SA Y. Housewifization Not only was the
housewife called on to reduce the labour power
costs, she was also mobilized to use her energies
to create new needs. A virtual war for
cleanliness and hygiene a war against dirt,
germs, bacteria, and so on was started in order
to create a market for the new products of the
chemical industry. Scientific home making was
also advocated as a means of lowering the mens
wage, because the wage would last longer if the
housewife used it economically. (106)

• WD Y. The household is the site in which
  women undertake unpaid labor for those members
  who are waged laborersWomens hidden inputs
  subsidize the production process throughout the
  commodity chain, thereby keeping consumer prices
  lower and profits higher. To generate family
  survival requirements, women engage in shadow
  work outside those formal capitalist structures
  in which labor is remunerated.
• (14)

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3. Does capital accumulation cause mistreatment
to women?
SA Y. Violence against women and extracting
womens labour through coercive labour relations
are part and parcel of capitalism. They are
necessary for the capitalist accumulation process
and not peripheral to it. In other words,
capitalism has to use, to strengthen, or even to
invent, patriarchal men-women relations if it
wants to maintain its accumulation model. (170)

• WD Y. Capitalism externalizes to women, the
  negative side-effects of cultural change and
  disruption. Domestic violence increases
  dramatically as manufacturing and extractive
  industries enter new zones, and females are
  almost always the victim. In addition,
  Malnutrition in the 3rd World is the most
  fundamental act of environmental sexism that is
  inflicted by the capitalist world-system upon
  women and girls as poor families allocate more
  of their scarce food resources and safe water to
  boys. (20)

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4. Does integration into capitalist commodity
chains bring destructive economic results for
women?
Data
Y. On the Silk Industry in Paterson, NJ By
1892, more men were employed in the city than
women... During the last ten years of the
century, male employment in Paterson rose overall
by about seventy percent, while female employment
rose only forty percent. The core sector of
skilled-male workers thus became concentrated in
Paterson while in surrounding towns of Northern
Pennsylvania, semi-skilled female workers labored
in the numerous scattered annex operations.

• WDY. Historically and currently, women have
  been targeted for the dirtiest, most back
  breaking aspects of the capitalist production
  process while higher-skilled, higher-paying
  artisan jobs have been reserved for males. (21)

Source Boles, Elson E. 2002. Critiques of
World-Systems Analysis and Alternatives Unequal
Exchange and Three Forms of Class Struggle in the
JapanUS Silk Network, 18801890. Journal of
World-System Research http//jwsr.ucr.edu 8 (2)
180.
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5. Does the capitalist process fail to remunerate
womens labor more so than mens labor?
Data

• WD Y. As it incorporates new zones of the
  globe, capitalism embraces two dialectical labor
  recruitment mechanisms. Some household members
  are proletarianized into wage laborers who
  produce capitalist commodities, but womens labor
  is concentrated into semiproletarianized
  activities that are only partially remuneratedIt
  is beyond this portal that we find the forgotten
  woman, and we will find her working longer hours
  than men to contribute surpluses that do not
  appear in the account books of the capitalist
  enterprise or in the governments tally of the
  GNP. (11,13)

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Data 1 (Q5)
Women work longer hours than men in nearly every
country (figure 4.1). Of the total burden of
work, women carry on average 53 in developing
countries and 51 in industrial countries.
Sample 31 countries on hours and min/day of
possibly remunerated productive work
United Nations Development Program. 1995. Gender
and Human Development. Human Development Report
(New York, United Nations) p. 88.
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Data 2 (Q5)
Of mens total work time in industrial countries,
roughly two-thirds is spent in paid SNA
activities and one-third in unpaid non-SNA
activities. For women, these shares are reversed.
In developing countries, more than three-fourths
of mens work is in SNA activities. So, men
receive the lions share of income and
recognition for their economic contribution
while most of womens work remains unpaid,
unrecognized and undervalued (figure 4.2)
SNA - purposes of economic analysis,
decision-taking and policy-making
United Nations Development Program. 1995. Gender
and Human Development. Human Development Report
(New York, United Nations) p. 89.
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6. Does capital accumulation lead to the physical
exploitation and punishment of women?
Data 1

• WD. Y. Domestic violence increases dramatically
  as manufacturing and extractive industries enter
  new zones, and females are almost always the
  victim. (20)

NUMBER OF REPORTS AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL PRESENTED
TO THE CARABINEROS IN 1998 (Chilean Police)
TOTAL NUMBER OF INDIVIDUALS APPREHENDED FOR
INTRAFAMILIAR VIOLENCE BY THE CARABINEROS, BROKEN
DOWN BY THE YEAR, SEX, AGGRESOR AND THE
VICTIM.(Numbers).
United Nations Development Program. Regional
Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean Inter
Agency Campaign on Womens Human Rights in Latin
America and the Caribbean. http//undp.org/rblac/g
ender/chile.htm 1998.
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Data 2 (Q6)

• WD. Y. The world-system is currently structuring
  a vast international sex industry, and girls are
  targeted as the human resources to be exploited.
  (20)

Y. As the Thai economy developed and new
communities of foreigners were established,
prostitution also expanded. (130) More recently,
there has been an expansion of indirect
prostitution. Prostitutes now work as
waitresses, as salesgirls in department stores,
as golf caddies and in a variety of other sectors
where they can meet potential customers. (138)
Lim, Lin Lean. The Sex Sector The Economic and
Social Bases of Prostitution in Southeast Asia.
Geneva, The International Labour Office, 1998.
pp. 130,39.
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Alternate Theory

• Based on socialist model experience in China and
  Cuba

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7. Is the capitalist process responsible for a
gender-segregated division of labor?

• WD Y. Historically and currently, women have
  been targeted for the dirtiest, most back
  breaking aspects of the capitalist production
  process while higher-skilled, higher-paying
  artisan jobs have been reserved for malesThird
  World women lose artisan jobs and local markets
  to imports and to commercialized agriculture.
  MNCs control the commodity chains that are
  initiating these economic changes. (21)

AA No. There is a non-random assignment of work
between heavy and light industries according to
gender differences. Women by and large are
concentrated in light industrial roles. Heavy
industries allegedly require energies and skills
which are regarded as not suitable for women.
Furthermore, wage scales for light industries are
considerably below that of the heavy industries.
(365) -and- Cubas political myth that womens
freedom has been achieved inhibits the
development of an independent womens movement.
Castro states that womens most important
function is the procreation of new generations
and they are not allowed to perform certain jobs
which are seen as unsuited to their weaker
nature. Moreover, perhaps in response to the
ideological orthodoxy, it is only rarely in Cuba
and then briefly, that an awareness is evinced of
how cultural stereotypes of the relation between
the sexes affect the life experience of Cuban
women. (376,388)
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8. Is the capitalist world-system to blame for
the historically overworked, unremunerated
woman worker?
AA N. Since the man must leave the house daily
either for collective farm work or for the
market, the woman is the one who frequently tends
the private plot. The household thus remains a
production unit for farm women. The attraction
of household production economy in addition to
the need for some women to stay home for child
care and other supportive activities, have indeed
kept a fairly sizable proportion of rural women
at home. Regardless of this attraction, however,
they must take part in collective work during the
busy season of the farm or they are vulnerable to
mass criticism for lack of collective interest.
(363)

• WD Y. The commodity chain approach can
  demonstrate that every node of the production
  process and every household that contributes
  labor and resources to that node - are microcosms
  of the structural inequities of the capitalist
  world-system. Men are simultaneously agents for
  capital and for themselves, keeping women
  intimidated and pliable. Consequently, women
  and girls contribute more labor power to
  household survival than males but they receive
  an inequitable share of the total pool of
  resources. (12)

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9. Is the capitalist world-system responsible for
limitations on womens basic needs?
AA N. When the collectivization of farm land
began, rural families became dependent on
collective efforts for grain allotment. However,
unlike the kibbutz organization, payment in China
is not gauged according to needs but according to
the total work points accumulated by family
members. Since women are perceived as unable to
compete with men in work output, their average
annual work points (which affects their grain
allotment) often fall to as little as one-half of
the mens work points. (362)

• WD Y. Worldwide, resource scarcities impact
  women much more severely than men. Water
  scarcity, desertification, deforestation, land
  degradation, and coastal pollution are forms of
  resource depletion that pose special hardships
  for women. Malnutrition is the most fundamental
  act of environmental sexism that is inflicted by
  the capitalist world-system upon women and girls.
  Half of all Third World children die before ten.
  Females are disproportionately represented among
  those deaths because poor families allocate more
  of their scarce food resources and safe water to
  boys. (20)

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10. Is the capitalist process responsible for a
gender-segregated division of labor?
Data

• WD Q7

No. Peking Embroidery and Applique Factory which
has 85 women workers, has a salary range of only
30 to 80 yuan. The Peking Glassware Factory,
which hires 60 women, has a salary range of 30
to 100 yuan. In contrast, the Peking Arts and
Crafts Factory, an industry with only 45 of its
workers who are women, offers a salary of up to
200 yuan per month.
No size of factory given. Symbol of uneven
dist.
Hsu-Balzer, Eileen, Richard Balzer and Francis
Hsu. China Day by Day. (New Haven and London
Yale University Press) 1974. p.211
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11. Is the capitalist world-system responsible
for limitations on womens basic needs?
Data

• WD Q9

N. The employment of women in rural cooperatives
posed a strain on their provision of domestic
services. To a limited degree, older women were
mobilized to handle childcare and other household
responsibilities. But domestic services were not
fully collectivized. Continued responsibility for
housework and official employment meant that
women were not able to earn as many work points
as their male counterparts. The resulting dual
burden was not only recognized, but justified by
the Remin Ribao (Communist Daily Paper)
"Participation in agricultural production is the
inherent right and duty of rural women. Giving
birth to children and raising them, as well as
preoccupation with household chores are also the
obligations of rural women. These things set
women apart from men."
Tsai, Kellee S. The Andrew Wellington Cordier
Essay Women and the State in Post-1949 Rural
China. Journal of International Affairs, Columbia
University School of International and Public
Affairs. 49 (2) 6. http//jia.sipa.columbia.edu/T
sai.html
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12. Does commodity chain analysis fail to
incorporate flows from the illegal sector?
Data

• WD Y. it documents the construction or
  creation of a market product, overlooking far too
  many human and ecological aspects. In other
  words, it becomes an analysis that emphasizes
  things rather than human beings, exactly opposite
  to the historical approach urged by Braudel.
  a narrow emphasis upon those waged and nonwaged
  laborers who are involved directly in manufacture
  of the commodity can ignore three types of hidden
  laborer inputs. There can be direct and indirect
  flows into the production process from
  subsistence sectors, from the informal economy
  and from illegal sectors. (10)

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Data (Q12)
No. Coca constitutes an ideal cash crop for
farmers in sparsely populated areas because (1)
unremunerated household labor used in coca
cultivation fits closely with the preexisting,
labor-intensive practices employed in other
crops, and (2) it uses readily available
indigenous technology, developed locally during
cocas longtime cultivation Tying the whole
commodity chain in cocaine together at all levels
is money laundering, the process by which
drug-related profits are deposited in bank
accounts or legitimate businesses and then
withdrawn or transferred into other accounts as
clean money.
Source Gereffi and Korzeniewicz. Commodity
Chains and Global Capitalism. (London, Greenwood
Press) 1994.p. 302
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• Thank You