Economies

Citation:

Barry, Joyce M. 2008. “‘A Small Group of Thoughtful, Committed Citizens’: Women’s Activism, Environmental Justice, and the Coal River Mountain Watch.” Environmental Justice 1 (1): 25–33.

Author: Joyce M Barry

Abstract:

This article examines the environmental justice efforts of the Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW) in Boone County, West Virginia. The CRMW is a grassroots group formed in 1998 to fight the effects of mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia. The membership of this organization is largely comprised of white, working-class women whose homes and community have been adversely impacted by this extractive industry. The CRMW serves as a watch dog of the coal industry oligarchy in the state, resisting the social and environmental injustices created by King coal and its abetting state political system. This article posits that around the country poor and working-class women respond collectively to threats on their homes and communities. However, the scale and impact of this social trend has yet to be adequately assessed by feminist and environmental justice scholars. There is a large body of important, ecofeminist scholarship examining women's connection to the natural world, mostly framed by the spiritual component of such connections. However, this scholarship frequently fails to consider the role of class and its relation to gender and the environment. Also, these analyses too often center women's individual responses to challenged environments, rarely focusing on women's collective actions. Environmental justice scholarship has done a tremendous job emphasizing the importance of class, social justice, and vulnerable communities' connection to the environment. However, the canon of environmental justice scholarship infrequently assesses the activism and importance of women in these grassroots movements. This is unfortunate considering that women make up 90% of the membership in environmental justice groups around the country. Using the Coal River Mountain Watch as a case study this article ultimately seeks to redress these shortcomings in existing scholarship, and highlight the efforts of this environmental justice organization.

Topics: Civil Society, Class, Economies, Economic Inequality, Poverty, Environment, Extractive Industries, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gender Analysis, Livelihoods Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2008

Citation:

Adusah-Karikari, Augustina. 2015. “Black Gold in Ghana: Changing Livelihoods for Women in Communities Affected by Oil Production.” The Extractive Industries and Society 2 (1): 24–32.

Author: Augustina Adusah-Karikari

Abstract:

This paper explores women’s diverse situations in the oil-producing coastal communities of Western Ghana, and the institutions that frame those situations. It examines how women’s private and public spaces have been reformulated by the production of oil in their community. The study engaged in different forms of qualitative inquiry: focus group discussions, in-depth interviews and participant observation. Findings reveal the oil exploration and production in Ghana has spawned a new social order in which women’s activities and livelihoods are invisible, thereby increasing their vulnerabilities. The case provides valuable insight for understanding the potential gender imbalances the oil industry may produce, and aims to assist government officials with framing policies to preempt or mitigate some of the adverse community-level impacts that may arise.

Keywords: oil, women's livelihoods, developing countries, oil communities

Topics: Development, Economies, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Livelihoods Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Ghana

Year: 2015

Citation:

Ross, Michael L. 2009. “Does Oil Wealth Hurt Women? A Reply to Caraway, Charrad, Kang, and Norris.” Politics & Gender 5 (04): 575-82.

Author: Michael Ross

Topics: Development, Economies, Economic Inequality, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Livelihoods, Political Economies, Political Participation

Year: 2009

Citation:

Anugwom, Edlyne. 2007. “Stuck in the Middle: Women and the Struggle for Survival in the Oil-Degraded Niger Delta.” Agenda: Empowering Women For Gender Equity, Biopolitics: New Technologies Trilogy, 1 (1): 58–68.

Author: Edlyne Anugwom

Abstract:

This focus examines the relevance of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) as economic and empowering mechanisms for women in the oil degraded Niger Delta region of Nigeria. While ICTs have become increasingly popular in the region and have provided economic niches for women, influence of ICTs has differed significantly between urban and rural women. Therefore, while urban women are now heavily engaged in various ICT businesses, like call centres and cyber cafés, the economic degeneration and underdevelopment of the rural enclaves have limited the commercial viability of ICTs for women. In spite of this, ICTs are important in both rural and urban areas in the region in terms of improving the knowledge base of women and enabling them to articulate their positions. Generally, the effective usage of ICTs, whether for leisure or commercial purposes, has been limited by structural constraints ranging from dearth of electricity to impoverished economic situations of women. However, the different impact of ICTs on women in urban and rural areas calls for a policy orientation that is conversant with the peculiar needs of women in both areas and the improvement of the general socio-economic situation of the rural enclaves.

Topics: Development, Economies, Education, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Infrastructure, Information & Communication Technologies, Livelihoods Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Nigeria

Year: 2007

Citation:

Porter, Gina. 2002. “Living in a Walking World: Rural Mobility and Social Equity Issues in Sub-Saharan Africa.” World Development 30 (2): 285-300. 

Author: Gina Porter

Abstract:

Accessibility and mobility are embedded in the development nexus in far-reaching ways. Field studies of mobility among women and men in rural settlements with poor road access illustrate the frustrations and costs of living off-road. They are frequently marginalized and invisible, even to local administrations. State decentralization appears to have had little positive impact in reducing ‘‘tarmac bias’’ and improving rural service delivery. A range of potential interventions, from Intermediate Means of Transport to electronic communications is reviewed, and opportunities for building social capital in off-road areas through nurturing improvements in state–civil society relations are considered.

Keywords: accessibility, mobility, off-road, decentralization, Africa, services

Topics: Civil Society, Development, Economies, Economic Inequality, Gender, Women, Men, Infrastructure, Transportation Regions: Africa

Year: 2002

Citation:

Fife, Wayne. 1995. “Models for Masculinity in Colonial and Postcolonial Papua New Guinea.” The Contemporary Pacific 7 (2): 277-302. 

Author: Wayne Fife

Abstract:

This paper discusses the kinds of models that became available in the colonial context for indigenous men to be men in what eventually became the country of Papua New Guinea. One of the legacies of colonialism and the missionization of masculinity is the development of a new hierarchy of masculine values. These newer norms are in marked contrast to older forms of male effectiveness, and they have helped to define social distinctions within contemporary Papua New Guinea. At the same time, the reality of human behavior spills over the confines of both older and newer cultural norms, and the results can be confusing for individual males. However, individual confusion does not affect the overall saliency of these historically engendered forms of masculinity, nor the importance they may have for the justification of emerging social and economic inequalities within the country.

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Economies, Economic Inequality, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Men, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Patriarchy, Indigenous Regions: Oceania Countries: Papua New Guinea

Year: 1995

Citation:

Fuentes, Annette, and Barbara Ehrenreich. 1983. Women in the Global Factory. Brooklyn, New York: South End Press.

Authors: Annette Fuentes, Barbara Ehrenreich

Abstract:

In free trade zones all over the world, women make up 80 to 90 percent of the workforce. Women in the Global Factory explores the lives of these women-from California's Silicon Valley to Mexico's maquiladoras (border factories) to New York's garment sweatshops.

Topics: Economies, Gender, Women, Livelihoods Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Mexico, United States of America

Year: 1983

Citation:

Mee, K. H. 1998. “Power and Representation: The Case of South Korean Women Workers.” Asian Journal of Women's Studies 4 (3): 61–108.

Author: K. H. Mee

Abstract:

This article focuses on South Korean working class women's political and cultural negotiation in the contexts of the South Korean labor movement of the late 1980s and the ever-evolving international division of labor. Based on an in-depth case study of a labor dispute in a U.S.-owned multinational corporation, it raises issues about how women workers in the international circuit of global capitalism are represented. By looking at how a labor struggle, waged by women workers against a multinational company's (MNC) factory closure, is presented in the realm of media representation and other writings, this article attempts to show how their struggle became a ground of discourse formation, reflecting diverse political interests. This is done by looking at the process of their struggle in the national and transnational space. The workers' own narratives, the media's presentation of their struggle, and the workers' own perception of it, are examined. While this article shows how the Korean women worker's struggle becomes a ground of discourse formation, reflecting varied political interests, it also focuses on how the workers manipulate their own images in a sophisticated way in vying for support from a broader audience. I define this as a specific form of "subaltern" representation and argue that gender images operate as core symbols of labor activities and constitute an important symbolic framework for the international division of labor. Since this case highlights diverse aspects of the conditions of Korean women workers' struggle, cutting across divisions of gender, class, and nation, it offers an arena for understanding the female subject in the process of globalization, which involves a complicated nexus of power and representation.

Topics: Class, Economies, Gender, Women, Media, Globalization, Livelihoods, Nationalism, Multi-National Corporations, Political Participation Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: South Korea

Year: 1998

Citation:

Nash, June C., and María Patricia Fernández-Kelly. 1983. Women, Men, and the International Division of Labor. Albany: SUNY Press.

Authors: June C. Nash, María Patricia Fernández-Kelly

Abstract:

The last few decades have witnessed a growing integration of the world system of production on the basis of a new relationship between less developed and highly industrialized countries. The effect is a geographical dispersion of the various production stages in the manufacturing process as the large corporations of industrialized "First World" countries are attracted by low labor costs, taxes, and relaxed production restrictions available in developing countries. This collection of papers focuses on inequalities among different sectors of the labor force, particularly those related to gender, and how these are affected by the changing international division of labor.

Topics: Economies, Economic Inequality, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Livelihoods

Year: 1983

Citation:

Prügl, Elisabeth, and Jacqui True. 2014. “Equality Means Business? Governing Gender through Transnational Public-Private Partnerships.” Review of International Political Economy 21 (6): 1137–69.

Authors: Elisabeth Prügl, Jacqui True

Abstract:

From the World Bank's 'gender equality is smart economics' to The Economist's 'womenomics' and Nike's 'girl effect', feminism seems to have well and truly penetrated the business world. Government action on behalf of gender equality is well institutionalized but private corporations appear as a new actor in this cause. This article asks: What do businesses and their public partners do in order to advance gender equality? What motivates their engagement now and how does it fit into existing public and private relationships of power? What do they mean for feminist agendas? How legitimate are they? And how effective are they? To address these questions the article examines four exemplary initiatives involving businesses in advancing gender equality and women's empowerment: the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Global Initiative, the World Economic Forum's Women Leaders and Gender Parity Program, the European Union's Programme on Gender Balance in Decision-Making Positions, and the UN Global Compact-UNIFEM Women's Empowerment Principles for Business. Our purpose is to conceptually locate these initiatives as new private forms of governance involving partnerships with governments. We assess these initiatives employing criteria of feminist evaluation and find decidedly ambiguous results. We argue that the new attention to gender equality in business and global economic governance is both an expression of and a key process in the transformation of states and corporations in the context of global competition and restructuring.

Topics: Economies, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Femininity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Governance, International Financial Institutions, International Organizations, Multi-National Corporations

Year: 2014