A pathbreaking study on the status of women labourers in Pakistan's manufacturing sector shows that they fare as badly as women in the rest of South Asia and perhaps worse.
The pundits of globalisation were perhaps trying to preempt a feminist critique of their macro policies when they devised – for their corporate clients – an elaborate employment structure that, on the face of it, appears gender- sensitive with its 'equal opportunity' and 'women are strongly encouraged to apply' slogans. This astute strategy may have worked for the handful of dynamic urban women in developing countries who have managed to break the proverbial glass ceiling and grace the boardrooms of multinational corporations. Indeed, leading women entrepreneurs and managers make regular headlines in the Pakistani press these days.
But those in the ivory towers of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the World Bank who care to look beyond the frosted glass of corporate culture will be confronted by the cheerless sight of women eking out a paltry living in the squalid outposts of the global production system. The Afghan refugee women toiling in the plastic 'industry' of Lahore's garbage dumps or women packing spices for a living in the slums of Karachi are more visible to the passer-by than the little events of the haute monde that seem to grab the attention of the media and policy establishment. Yet they have for all practical purposes been disowned by the globalising intelligentsia, except as so much dressed up numbers to 'prove' that liberalisation has empowered and emancipated women in conservative societies. And so long as this attitude persists there is unlikely to be any reformulation of the current orthodoxies on 'poverty management'.
The grim sociology of women's work is more than adequately reflected in the grim statistics of the last decade. The trickle-down economy has regained respectability in the doctrine of globalisation. Yet, after a decade of economic liberalisation in Pakistan (introduced in the country in 1991), close to two-thirds of its women workers earn less than the official minimum wage, which in 1992 was set at PNR 2000 a month. After factoring in the inflation rate for the year 2000, the number of women in Pakistan who earn less than the stipulated minimum wage rises to 88 percent. Furthermore, in consonance with the pattern in other developing countries, incomes of women workers are lower than that of their male counterparts.