When, as part of her research, the feminist academic June Fernandez-Kelly got a job as a worker in a maquiladora (a factory in Mexico producing goods for US multinationals), she discovered how arduous the 'unskilled' job of sewing pockets onto garments actually was. Demanding perfect coordination of hands, eyes and legs, the task required great nimbleness – a trait associated with women, who are drawn in ever-larger numbers into this kind of low-wage production in the global economy. Fernandez-Kelly was expected to sew almost 400 pockets every hour, about 3000 every day, all for around USD 5 a day.
The excerpt of Fernandez-Kelly's work in The Women, Gender and Development Reader (WGDR) is insightful and richly detailed, as is much of the rest of the book. Both of the books under review were originally published in London, and have now been republished in Southasia by Zubaan. Included in WGDR are texts by such well-known Southasian social scientists and activists as Gita Sen, Bina Agarwal and Chandra Mohanty, as well as a host of additional, formative feminist essays.
Over recent decades, the academic world of gender and development studies has moved through several paradigms and models. The newest, it now appears, is the WCD (Women, Culture and Development) model. The frivolity of acronyms apart, this book demonstrates that, regardless of this paradigm shift, the earlier models are far from obsolete. For example, Danish economist Ester Boserup's sterling contributions to the field during the 1970s still stand out. We continue to draw upon her demonstration of the strong and positive role that African women had historically played, even under patriarchal conditions, as agricultural subsistence producers. Or, her exposé of the ways in which European colonial law and economics marginalised such women.
There are also, however, distinct tensions in the field of gender and development. An influential group in this field works for international development agencies funded by wealthy countries of the North, where they also live. The work of such practitioners is limited by the murkiness of the politics of international aid, and the self-serving and exploitative interests of such countries. Equally, academics and activists based in the developing countries find that the women who are their subject are constantly squeezed from three directions: between conservative or fundamentalist interests; a state receding from welfarism; and the increasingly volatile nature of global markets, which now seek to mould women into docile subjects of the 'flexible', service-driven, 'feminised' new global economy. In the new marketplace of emerging service sectors, such as call-centres, women workers are greatly in demand due to several stereotypes: their perceived conversational and 'courteous' skills, willingness to work flexible hours, and tendency to steer clear of aggressive unionisation.