index of 2005 conference papers

GLOBALISATION AND GENDER
How to move towards gender equality

Josephine Yazali

Globalization has come into use in Asia in the last 10 years. It indicates that the world now is more interconnected than it was before. It has brought changes in the global economy-notably rapid movements of large volumes of money, increased volume of trade, through ICT.It has further helped to bridge the gender inequalities in employment and economic status of Asian women especially in India . The present paper aimed to focus on these aspects of strengths of globalization and IT sector in bridging the gender disparities by increasing the technical education opportunities and IT accessibility to women.

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This paper hopes to provide the participants of this conference an overview of globalization and the issues surrounding to gender equality and education. We start; in the first introductory section we made an attempt to discuss the relationship between globalization role of ICT and gender. The second section reviews Gender and ICT -current scenario. It will be followed by Importance of ICT for women empowerment and discusses the options that are available to reduce the inequalities – minimizing the damages of globalisation and maximizing the opportunities of globalization. The fourth section discusses the current situation of women and ICT providing illustrations of Asia and India. The last section of conclusion (5 th) makes some specific suggestions and recommendations regarding the courses of action can take to ensure such an outcome.

Introduction

Globalization is a controversial term being defined in different ways. It has come into use in the last ten years. In fact it makes us wonder what is this force that has emerged on planet Earth to attract such attention? It indicates that the world now is more interconnected than it was before. It is a result of changes in the global economy – notably rapid movements of large volumes of money and increased volume of trade as well as changes in communications and in information technology. These trends are related in turn with a variety of political, cultural and educational changes. Globalization integrates the world economy through more trade and intensified factor mobility. Movement of people from one country to another links them to distant localities in such a way that local happening are shaped and in turn shape events occurring miles away. (Giddens, 1994). Globalization implies weakening of the restrictions imposed by or inherent in a nation state. The 19 th century had seen the weakening of the national barriers, as the movement of goods services, capital, and labor are much easier. The 20the century saw progressive liquidation of the colonialism and corresponding rise in the powers of the Nation &state. We find that the mainsprings of globalization during this period were development in IT, which contributed more than anything else to the emergence of a’ global village’.

The U.K. Government’s white paper on globalization of December 2000 –highlighted, making Globalization to work for the poor – aims to address – ‘there is no alternative’ to globalization and we must learn to live with it. Not only that globalization creates unprecedented new opportunities for sustainable development and poverty reduction. This paper also recognizes that globalization poses threats to employment and livelihood and more intensive impact on the wekersections and to the human security in general. However we must have to learn how to live with it.

The UNDP’s Human Development Report further substantiates this point & states that the Public health has declined, it can be seen in the spread of aids, there is increasing environmental degradation, there is underemployment or unemployment which now accounts for one-third of the labor force of the world – one billion people according to ILO as the relevance of education, type of education in demand has changed drastically. Education is undergoing constant changes under the effects of globalization. The structure of education is being altered to enable it to compete in an open, global market, leading to the modification of education. Education institutions around the world are being forced to compete globally, by engaging in entrepreneurial activities to sustain themselves in an uncertain and competitive world. The strongest arms of the globalization are privatization and Information Technology. As women education and gender disparity in education in developing countries are already a major problem this has added fuel to the problem.

For women in Asia, given the skewed distribution of resources within households and communities, that makes not just access to health, but often-basic survival itself and struggle. Female literacy in many Asian countries has always been lower in enrolment of higher education than boys. Thus the gender inequality, is already exists in Asia,. Privatization of higher education and the introduction of self-financed courses in colleges and universities can be seen as the major impact of globalization on women. A high fee structure in private institutes and self-financed course would be detrimental to women taking admission at the tertiary level education. The already existing gender inequalities have reinforced more forcibly. Thus entry of women in technical education is becoming much difficult as a result the job opportunities for them also shrinking.

Gender and ICT -current scenario

In the service industries of banking, finance, and insurance, women are concentrated at the lower and less skilled employment levels. In India, for example, women made up 70% of the banking workforce by the middle of the last decade. Women's employment in the telecommunications industry in Malaysia reflects similar percentages. However, they tend to be data entry clerks, computer typists, or tellers. The percentages of women in electronic data processing and in management are low, ranging from one to 12% in India. According to Nancy Hafkin and Nancy Taggart in their study entitled “Gender, Information Technology and Developing Countries: An Analytical Study” Although IT is a new field; a "gendered" division of labor is already emerging. In general, women tend to be concentrated in end-user, lower skilled IT jobs related to word processing or data entry, comprising only small percentages of managerial, maintenance, and design personnel in networks, operating systems, or software development. In brief the impact on women is mixed i.e.

• The Trade openness increased the share of women's paid employment but they are also the first to lose their jobs when economic crunches occur.
• Women predominate informal subcontracting, which is on the rise, but this is associated with low wages and poor working conditions.

Thus, Women also predominately prefers home based, part- and tele-work that accommodates family care obligations but these jobs are precarious and poorly paid. But how to make this weakness into strength for the women is a major problem. In this context, in the following section we tried to discuss the Asian scenario by focusing on India illustatrtions.

Globalisation in Asia with special focus on ICT India

Globalization refers to the international flow of goods, capital, labor, services, information, which has occurred in response to, improved transport and limitless revolution in communication technologies, and the regulatory policies/economy restructuring policies adopted in many countries during the past two decades by realizing as the economy restructuring as a path for economic development. At first, the development paths adopted were just four Asian tigers. The next were South East Asian countries, which experienced very rapid growth of development and employment during last decade. Thailand Indonesia Malaysia and Chain also now join them. In the past few years the Philippines, and even Bangladesh have shown interest to follow them. This process of restructuring has made the nations to liberalise, and then privatized and Globalise (LPG). The reforms in these countries are related to Information Technology, Trade, Industry financial, Fiscal, Agriculture Sectors. These reforms have made tremendous impact on education and training either directly or indirectly. Some cases, it had a lethal effect and in some cases, it has done miracles and experienced rapid economic growth. The Developing countries that has experienced rapid economic growth over the last decades in technology revolution were, Republic of Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

The sector of Information Technology (IT) has shown impressive results in these countries. The last decade liberalization and globalization have gone hand in hand. As a result, the information technology has spread fastly. IT could simply defined as ‘Technology to exploit information the most efficient way’ it comprises computer science, telecommunications, electronics and computer applications. This also includes artificial intelligence, Robotics’, Numerically controlled Machines, Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) Computer aided designs etc..

Now India is beginning to see the culture of innovations and magic in hi-tech. The IT magic after globalization has not only made the software sector as one of the high value-addition and net foreign exchange earning industries, but has created a history of sort in the Indian stock exchanges. The strengths of the capacity of IT to generate, foreign exchange and employment has already caught the imagination of Indian businessmen, citizens, economists, educationists, planners and politicians. Thus Globalization has made many changes in Asia in the last 10 years. It indicates that the world now is more interconnected than it was before. It is a result of changes in the global economy-notably rapid movements of large volumes of money, increased volume of trade as well as change in communication and information technology In each of these sectors. Last decade of economic reforms has touched different sectors, ranging from Agriculture to International Trade. Thus, there is an up rise of demand for IT related education. As a result e-learning centers, corporate universities, abundant Computer Coaching Institutions, Technical Institutions and Engineering Institutions has grown tremendously in many parts of Asia particularly in India. Moreover functioning of the govt offices, in agriculture, education, Industrial and business sector has also drastically changed. Many innovative IT related changes were taken place in these sectors. These changes has yielded better results and led to digital empowerment. However, the gender inequalities already existing gender inequalities in education and employment were aggravated by the process of globalization and the new technology movement., Thus In this context to explore, how weakness of globalization can be made as strengths for women empowerment and reduce gender inequalities is discussed in this paper. Few illustrations of India are discussed below.

The Indian IT industry and women employment (Illustration from India)

There are several employment opportunities in IT for young women who have had education and training in urban, English medium schools. The IT enabled services centres offer several opportunities to women. The IT enabled services require excellent verbal communication skills and pleasing personality. Data entry/data conversion needs typing conversion and strong written English communication skills. Medical transcription requires a good understanding of medical terminology, ability to understand English with different accents and good typing speed. Entry-level salaries range from Rs.3,000-10,000 a month. After four to five years of experience, medical transcriptions can look forward to Rs.14,000-20,000 a month. The same is true for other jobs in this field. The age of entry is between 19-24 years. The minimum qualifications required are class 12. Call centres prefer women as they feel that women are better suited to voice-based projects.

A large number of women are joining the IT enabled services sector (Ramani, S. 2000). A large number of companies as GE, American Express, Standard Chartered Bank, citibank, British Airways, Microsoft, AOL time Warner, HP, Dell Computers, Prudential Insurance, Morgan Stanley, Mark & Spencer have call centres where a sizeable number of women are employed ranging from 35 to 65% (www.express it people.com). GE capital had 40 to 55% women employees in their various centres (Sandhya Sule, 2002). A study of an international call centre at Pune (Dutta, 2003) showed that 59% of employees were women.

As per Nasscom estimates, women comprise 20 – 25% of total number of science and engineering graduates in the country. The number of software professionals has been rising continuously over the years. The number of software professionals increased from 6800 in 1985 to 650,000 in 2003-2004 (Nasscom, 2004). Women are joining the IT sector and their numbers are fast increasing in India.

In 1993, only 10% of workforce was women. In 1998, 18% of IT workforce was a woman, which was higher than the national average of 12%. In 2003, the proportion increased to 21%. The participation of women in IT is rapidly growing and is expected to go up to 35% in 2005. Hence, women are now occupying a prominent position in the labour force.

Women in India are employed in IT companies located mainly in cities as Bangalore , Poona , Chennai, Delhi , Hyderabad and Bombay . More women are employed are employed in Southern regions of the country, where hiring of professionals was 41 percent as compared to Eastern region at 6 percent (Nasscom 2003). The women employed in IT belong to the younger age group. The overall median age of software professionals was about 25.6 years. 44 percent of software professionals possessed over 3 years of work experience (Nasscom 2003).

Due to IT, women have employment options as flexitiming and work at home concept. Tele-tech India , a joint venture BPO company between Tele-tech and the Bharti Group, gives its employees a choice of four-day weeks instead of the normal five, hourly rates with a minimum number of work hours in a week. There are incentives for housewives and other part-time workers for 30-hour weeks.

Mumbai-based Datamatics Technologies, a BPO which processes data, women to work from home, 20 hours a week. This facilitates employment for married women, especially with small children. The employee strength is over 800 part-time workers as compared to only 500 permanent employees. Tracmail, a Mumbai-based business process outsourcing (BPO) company employs 2,000 people of which roughly 45 per cent of them are women who work 8.5- hour shifts, attending calls from clients across the world. A BPO company, Infowavz International, has one third of its 800 employees as women. 24X7 Customer Service, a company based in Bangalore employs women in large numbers where the share of women employees increased from 25 per cent to 40 per cent in the last two years. ICICI onesource, a company based in Mumbai has 2,400 employees, of which 60 per cent are women, in the age group of 22 to 27 years. There are more women employees in call centres in north and western India .

Workforce trends show that a large number of women are joining the ICT sector. What is the position of women in newly emerging areas of information technology? Has ICT provided suitable employment opportunities to women leading to women empowerment? The main objective of this paper is to examine the different ways in which in IT has benefited women in terms of employment. However, the extension of the market economy can have both positive and negative effects for women’s situation and gender relations. Positive effects may include increased employment opportunities for women in non-traditional sectors, thus enabling them to earn and control income. This is potentially empowering and may contribute to enhancing women’s capacity to negotiate their role and status within the household and society. Negative effects can include increased exploitation and dependency on direct engagement with the market, and particularly on the vagaries of the market.In the past two decades, the relocation of labour intensive industries from advanced market economies to middle income developing economies has increased employment of women in the latter. Even though female employment remains concentrated mainly in low skill sectors and the gender wage gap shows no signs of disappearing, the rapid increase in the female labour force participation rate has a considerable positive effect on women’s economic well being and that of their families. Nevertheless, the issue of the poor conditions under which many women enter the labour market needs to be consistently raised. The problem is particularly acute in sweatshops in the informal sector, which through arrangements such as sub-contracting and outsourcing became an integral part of the formal economy and has experienced an explosive growth in recent years. In the developed countries, on the other hand, as industries relocate elsewhere in search of cheaper labour and production, labour demand has been shifting towards relatively high-skill manufacturing, while employment growth in traditionally low skill sectors such as relatively low-skill sectors in textiles and apparel, where women workers predominate, has been declining. The impact of these trends as observed, in both developing and developed countries, on gender relations is still not too clear. Evidence from around the world on women’s labour market participation and gender inequalities (e.g. wage gap, power relations, etc.) is still mix

Importance of ICT for women empowerment

ICT, Gender and the labor market: The present day is witnessing a rapid change from an industrial to a knowledge based global economy. A highly skilled labour force is the key to success in the knowledge economy (Skyrme 1997, Stiglitz 1999). In the knowledge era, ‘information technology’ serves an integrated factor of production. The Information and Communication Technologies have reduced the globe to a village. These technologies have created new opportunities for scientific progress, economic development, education and social change.

The IT industry has gained the status of the fastest growing industry all over the world. In Asia particularly India too, the IT sector has come to occupy a prominent position. The contribution of ICT is significant in terms of income and earnings, growth and employment generation (Nasscom 2002). An abundant pool of skilled manpower has facilitated the rapid growth of IT industry in India. Hence, the IT workforce has come to occupy an important role in the economy.

The IT sector has not only created a large number of jobs, but has also resulted in new types of challenging careers. In the IT sector, emphasis is on intellectual rather than physical resources. In the knowledge industry, work is the output of skills ( Taylor 1998). Knowledge workers get fulfillment through their work (Drucker 1999). As emphasis is on knowledge, the IT industry is considered non-discriminating. It is considered an equal opportunity employer for men and women, minorities and handicapped alike.

ICT has profound gender implications for both men and women in employment, education, training and other productive and personal development areas of life. What becomes clear from these discussions and case studies is that access for rural women will depend critically on where the technologies are located. The most efficient and beneficial use of ICTs is closely related to the kind of information produced and distributed, that is, information that directly supports women's activities and responsibilities. In order to facilitate access for women from various classes and sectors, ICTs will need to be located in places which women frequent and to which they have open and equal access, such as health centres, women's NGOs, women's employment centres and perhaps even places of worship. In this context, location also pertains to the practical, specific kind of information that women require as a result of the time constraints they face. When women can understand and experience the benefits of ICTs, they are quick to use such technologies. Establishing telecommunication canters in local communities is also a potentially useful strategy, if gender obstacles to access to them by women are taken into account. Information production and distribution strategies will also be an important consideration in order to make the most of each point of access. They will need to be flexible, mixed media and multi-technology systems in order to reach the greatest number of women effectively. Further consideration should also be given to the social background of women. For example, because girls in many developing countries tend to leave formal education earlier than boys, Technical education should be started at an early level of education.

There are several Opportunities arising for women out of the Globalization of Technologies: one among is ICT and Biotechnology ICT can make some of the traditional farming role of women redundant leading to unemployment particularly among older and rural women. Imported bio-technologies are not always relevant to the needs and traditions of the communities but they can Makes it possible to codify and transfer some of the unmodified knowledge of local women to the global market. However if uncompensated, the move deprives women the economic gains and royalty they should be entitled to. to make the most out of globalization, we must manage globalization better so that its downside is minimized and its benefits maximized.

The second Opportunity is Relocated service sector jobs from high-wage countries. A combination of personal computers, cheap software, and cost-effective connectivity has given rise to networking technologies. The Internet is the prime example, whereby it is possible to transfer digitalized information across local boundaries with ease. These networking technologies are bringing new job opportunities for women in vast numbers in the region particularly in English speaking countries, such as India and the Philippines. A wide range of service sector jobs (e.g., medical transcription, data entry, geographical information systems, back office clerical jobs, airlines ticketing, customer care services) can be and are being located from high-wage OECD to low-wage Asian countries that have a steady pool of high quality women workers. These relocated jobs are called Remote Processing. Women are getting a substantial proportion (nearly 20%) of relocated software services in the region-- in India, the figure is 20%; the figure is comparable in the Philippines. As it takes up a smaller amount of capital to start up businesses in remote processing work, women find new opportunities in self-employment as sub-contractors of global corporations.

Opportunities Arising out of the Globalization of Technologies:

Imports of technology affect the local modes of production and employment. Internet technologies facilitate the way companies can locate and manage production away from the main site to geographically distributed centers. This expands employment possibilities of women who live away from metropolises, in suburbia, in rural areas-- both in the manufacturing and services sector. To achieve this Governance is the key -- because Governance is not just mere government, but includes the framework of rules, institutions and established practices that sets limits and give incentives for the behavior of individuals, organizations and firm. Such technologies allow women to have possibilities of flexible location and flexible hours, through tele working or with the use of neighborhood centers. It also allows women to have new forms of business: such as selling telephone services and Internet services through Internet and telephone kiosks or cellular phones. There are examples of such initiatives in India and Bangladesh. These potentials become reality only when the policy makers can create an enabling environment of. Access to infrastructure such as adequate connectivity and low-cost telephones. Institutional innovations, such as tele-centres, or Internet kiosks that facilitate commercial and affordable use of new technologies. An adequate pool of skilled women workers with literacy in English and computing: in order to be employed in the new economy or be self-employed e.g., as an entrepreneur of telephone shops or Internet kiosks.

Conclusions and policy implications

The advent of globalisation and IT one can change the concept of work, especially for women. It is expected that more women will enter this sector as the new emerging trend could allow women to work from home with Internet and telecom connectivity. Flexi timings and work at home would enable more women to join the labour force. It has been observed that companies like Datamatics have adopted this policy and it has proved to be a graet success. Similarly, other companies should also use this policy. The concept of part time work will also go a long way in helping women. There should be provision of child care support as day care centres and crèches also. All these factors will go a long way in benefiting women.Women also predominately prefers home based, part- and tele-work that accommodates family care obligations but these jobs are precarious and poorly paid. But how to make this weakness into strength for the women is a major problem. It can be by improving technical education facilities for women or introducing technical education/ICT related courses for girls at early stage might help to women certain extent.As we have seen in the case of India and Asian increase of women in IT related jobs and contributing to the family and national income. To reduce the gender disparities and empower the women,Women should form a significant portion of labour force. To help women, policies should be undertaken as to increase women’s access to computers and internet. There should be provisions for setting up of more women’s only access sites. Efforts should be directed towards improving women’s skills and usage of new technology.

It is also found from the several studies that there is a wide gap between computer education and absorption in the labour market. This is due to the fact there is restricted mobility for women. Timings of work are also a problem for women. Factors as Marriage, Childbirth, childrearing and household responsibilities may prevent women from working fulltime. Policies should be made to subsidise childcare. Transport facilities should be provided to women. If women had a break from work, there should be provisions for retraining in industry .

Steps should be taken to encourage women employees. Noteworthy examples are companies as Infosys, Wipro and I- flex of India . The Infosys Women Inclusivity Network (IWIN), conducts networking and mentoring sessions along with initiating policies, benefits and training via the group and there is a similar initiative within Wipro, called Women of Wipro (WOW).  I-flex Solutions ensures that women are encouraged to join i-flex by having a woman representative on most its employment panels and has also run women-focused recruitment advertising campaigns.

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index of 2005 conference papers