The Plight of Women Workers!
While agricultural sector has
been traditionally a big job provider
for women of rural India, with the
introduction
of
neo-liberal
economic policies of imperialist
globalisation participation of
women in labour market has been
considerably increasing and the
textile-garment industry became
the biggest job provider to the
women in our country. The crises
in agriculture has led to the
migration of rural women to cities
and industries seeking liveli-
hoods. Particularly the vulnerability
of women has attracted the textile-
garments industry enabling them
to exploit the labour-power of the
women to a great extent in gaining
its super-profits.
However the pundits and
supporters of the neoliberal
economic policies of imperialist
globalisation claim that those
economic policies have given more
opportunities to women to enter in
to economic sphere leading them
contd from page 11
reduced the contradictions
between the rich and poor nations.
Although a handful of third world
countries, benefiting from the
globalization process, have made
noteworthy progress in industria-
lization and trade, the overall gap
between core and periphery
nations has kept on widening.…
The process of globalization has
produced much that is new in the
world’s economy and politics, but
it has not changed the basic ways
capitalism operates. Nor has it
aided the cause of either peace or
prosperity.34
Indeed, there is something
deeply ironic about the growing
rejection of the theoretical critique
of imperialism in the present global
context. As Argentinian Marxist Atilio
Borón observed in 2003 in
“Empire” and Imperialism,
12
towards their goal of empowerment
and emancipation of women. They
also complain that the present day
rate of participation of women in
employment is still not sufficient for
economic growth of our country in
to a developed nation and more
and more women have to be drawn
in to industrial employment which
would further their cause. The
international organisations like
I.L.O. and U.N.O. too argue in the
same lines, that it would bring out
empowerment of women.
All these arguments and
preachings appear to be more and
more
progressive
towards
promoting the interests of women.
But the actual experience of women
working in textiles, SEZs and other
industries as well in agricultural
sector expose the dubiousness
and hypocrasy of such arguments
in the context of our Indian semi-
colonial, semi-feudal system over
which the capitalist methods of exploitation of labour power are
super imposed and the inhuman
exploitation of women workers in
carried out.
The women workers in textile
and garment industry in Bangalore-
Karnataka, in Tamilnadu, in A.P in
BRANDIX
company
at
Visakhapatnam
are
being
subjected to inhuman and
unbelievable working-conditions
and ruthless exploitation of their
labour power. The employers are
making super-profits out of the
exploitation of the women-workers.
These women-workers are not
allowed to join in unions and
organise themselves. They are
made to work even in the night time
with the connivance and
acceptance of the concerned
governments. They are made to
work more than 10 hrs a day. They
are even not allowed freely to go
to toilets. They are harassed by
their superiors in various forms.
They are sexually harassed. They
imperialism today reflects those
“fundamental features” with
respect to the concentration and
centralization of capital on a global
scale portrayed by the classical
Marxist theorists of imperialism, but
in more developed forms:
“This new stage [of imperialism
in Lenin’s sense] is characterized,
now even more than in the past,
by the concentration of capital, the
overwhelming predominance of
monopolies, the increasingly
important role played by financial
capital, the export of capital and the
division of the world into “spheres
of influence.” The acceleration of
globalization that took place in the
final quarter of the last century,
instead of weakening or dissolving
the imperialist structures of the
world economy, magnified the
structural asymmetries that define the insertion of the different
countries in it. While a handful of
developed capitalist nations
increased their capacity to control,
at least partially, the productive
processes at a global level, the
financia-lization of the international
economy and the growing
circulation of goods and services,
the great majority of countries
witnessed the growth of their
external dependency and the
widening of the gap that separated
them from the centre. Globali-
zation, in short, consolidated the
imperialist domination and
deepened the submission of
peripheral capitalisms, which
became more and more incapable
of controlling their domestic
economic
processes
even
marginally.35”
to be contd. in the Next Issue
Class Struggle