Multi-National Corporations

Citation:

Laite, Julia Ann. 2009. “Historical Perspectives on Industrial Development, Mining, and Prostitution.” The Historical Journal 52 (3): 739–61.

Author: Julia Ann Laite

Abstract:

Prostitution has been linked by many historians and social commentators to the industrial development and capitalism of the modern age, and there is no better example of this than the prostitution that developed in mining regions from the mid-nineteenth century. Using research on mining-related prostitution, and other social histories of mining communities where prostitution inevitably forms apart, large or small, of the historian's analysis of the mining region, this article will review, contrast, and compare prostitution in various mining contexts, in different national and colonial settings. From the American and Canadian gold rushes in the mid-and late nineteenth century, to the more established mining frontiers of the later North American West, to the corporate mining towns of Chile in the interwaryears, to the copper and gold mines of southern Africa and Kenya in the first half of the twentieth century, commercial sex was present and prominent as the mining industry and mining communities developed. Challenging the simplistic images and stereotypes of prostitution that are popularly associated with the American mining frontier, historians have shown that prostitution's place in mining communities, and its connection to industrial development, was as complex as it was pervasive and enduring.

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Governance, Livelihoods, Sexual Livelihoods, Multi-National Corporations Regions: Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, Americas, North America, South America Countries: Canada, Chile, Kenya, South Africa, United States of America

Year: 2009

Citation:

Authors: Edward Uche Omeire, Agbatse Augustine Aveuya, Chinedu T. Muoneme Obi, Adolphus Gold, Ufomba Akudo, Chinemerem Adaiheoma Omeire

Abstract:

This paper examines the impact of gas flaring on Niger Delta Women. The findings of the study show that gas flaring impact men and women disappropriately, with women being more exposed and vulnerable due to a number of associated cultural and socio-economic factors. It was also observed that gas flaring ritual has continued endlessly in Niger Delta due to a number of factors which include: lack of political will, lack of sound and broad regulatory framework, high level of corruption and lack of patriotism among state actors and above all, insincerity and lack of environmental accountability among multi-national oil companies operating in the Niger delta. The authors therefore conclude that there is the urgent need to mainstream gender in oil and gas policies in Nigeria. There is also the need to put in place a sound and broad regulatory framework that will compel multi-national oil companies operating in the Niger delta to be environmentally accountable to the people.

Keywords: gas flaring, Niger Delta, women, degradation, environment

Topics: Corruption, Environment, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Men, Gender Mainstreaming, Governance, Energy, Multi-National Corporations Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Nigeria

Year: 2014

Citation:

Author: Jeannette Graulau

Annotation:

"The purpose of this research is to establish the grounds for a critical social scientific analysis of mineral development based upon the case study of women in informal peasant gold mining or garimpagem in the Brazilian Amazon. Situated at the local/regional level of analysis, this case study illustrates the main tensions of contemporary mineral development. First, the region's mineral development paths appear as a result of the application of liberal and neo-liberal economic policies of modernization and liberalization of primary export sectors and late on import substituting industrialization...In the second place, intersecting and conflictive discourses of local, national, and international mineral development drive regional production. Nationally owned mining companies, subsidiaries of multinational corporations, and formal and informal small-scale mining enterprises fight against each other for legitimate 'rights' over land management and mineral extraction...Third, historically dispossessed female peasantry of North, Centre, South Eastern Amazon and North East Brazil, compete against national and multinational mining firms in the extraction of minerals, mainly gold and semi-precious stones" (Graulau, 2001, p. 71).

Topics: Development, Economies, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Land Grabbing, Multi-National Corporations Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Brazil

Year: 2001

Citation:

Delgado, Juana Vera. 2015. “The Socio-Cultural, Institutional, and Gender Aspects of the Water Transfer-Agribusiness Model for Food and Water Security: Lessons Learned from Peru.” Food Security 7 (6): 1187–97.

Author: Juana Vera Delgado

Abstract:

This paper critically analyses the potentials and frontiers of an agribusiness model developed along the arid coastal area of Peru. To make this model work, water from Andean rivers and lakes have been dammed and transferred to the coastal area through sophisticated and highly expensive hydraulic infrastructures. Although this ‘water transfer-agribusiness’ (WATA) model has attained its objectives to let the desert bloom and increase agro-exports from Peru, it does so at the cost of local environmental degradation, social unrest and gender disparities. These unintended consequences arose, in part, because the WATA model is anchored in ideologies of domination of nature and colonization of empty territories. The construction of water infrastructure, namely ‘Large Scale Irrigation’ (LSI) left aside the sociocultural, gender, and environmental aspects that these kinds of interventions should include. Based on studies of water transfer from the Colca River to the ‘Pampas de Majes’ in the Arequipa region in the south-west of Peru, this paper analyses, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the consequences of such interventions on the food/water security and environmental health of the affected population (Abstract from original source​).

Keywords: water transfer, agribusiness, large-scale irrigation, Gender, ethnicity, water insecurity, food insecurity

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Agriculture, Development, Environment, Food Security, Gender, Gender Analysis, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Multi-National Corporations, Rights, Land Rights, Security Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Peru

Year: 2015

Citation:

Lahiri-Dutt, Kuntala. 2006. “Globalization and Women’s Work in the Mine Pits in East Kalimantan, Indonesia.” In Women Miners in Developing Countries: Pit Women and Others, edited by M Macintyre, 349-69. Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

Author: Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

Topics: Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Globalization, Livelihoods, Multi-National Corporations Regions: Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Indonesia

Year: 2006

Citation:

Gibson, Ginger, and Deanna Kemp. 2008. “Corporate Engagement with Indigenous Women in the Minerals Industry: Making Space for Theory.” In Earth Matters: Indigenous Peoples, the Extractive Industries and Corporate Social Responsibility, edited by Ciaran O’Faircheallaigh and Saleem Ali, 104–22. Sheffield, UK: Greenleaf Publishing Ltd.

Authors: Ginger Gibson, Deanna Kemp

Abstract:

This chapter focuses on corporate engagement of indigenous women in and around large-scale mining. It explores empirical data on this subject and relates this to several different theories. The chapter provides theory in two main ways: as a frame to help make sense of the world and as a predictive tool to understand what might happen sometime in the future. It reviews Marxist or class-based analysis, with Marxist-feminist theory as an outgrowth of this general approach, and cultural theory, with postmodern cultural theory as an outgrowth. Postmodern cultural theory reveals multiple levels of gendered exclusion. The chapter outlines how the minerals industry considers indigenous women at a policy level and provides some empirical findings about corporate engagement with indigenous women. Employment is an important avenue for indigenous people to gain benefits from mineral development. Some mining operations employ small numbers of indigenous women.

Topics: Development, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Indigenous, Multi-National Corporations, Rights, Indigenous Rights

Year: 2008

Citation:

Ekine, Sokari. 2008. “Women’s Responses to State Violence in the Niger Delta.” Feminist Africa 10: 67–83.

Author: Sokari Ekine

Abstract:

This paper will discuss the ways in which the women of the Niger Delta have responded to acts of violence by the Nigerian State and its allies, the multinational oil companies. I first briefly outline the background to the crises in the Niger Delta and then discuss the responses and resistance of the women.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, Civil Society, Corruption, Democracy / Democratization, Development, Economies, Economic Inequality, Poverty, Environment, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Femininity/ies, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Governance, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Militarism, Multi-National Corporations, Peacebuilding, Post-Conflict, Security, Human Security Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Nigeria

Year: 2008

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:

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

Citation:

Kim, Min Hoe 김민회. 2009. “Subalternization of Asian Women Workers in American Transnational Capitalism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Journal of American Studies 41 (1): 45–71.

Author: Min Hoe Kim 김민회

Abstract:

One thing which Asian American scholars in the late twentieth century have considered as the most controversial issue in relation to Asian women subjectivity is how to recover visibility of Asian women subject and relocate them from the subalternized positions in the processes of multinational, corporate capitalism which collude with the local patriarchies and constantly-reinvented traditions by them. Gayatri Spivak indicates that those systems have erased the Asian women workers' desire not only for becoming an independent subject for those phllucentric labor systems but also for being a consuming subject to which they have produced by themselves. Similarly, Grace Chang, Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Aihwa Ong, and Andrew Ross argue that Asian and Asian immigrant workers have been placed at a doubly oppressive subject by domestic and international economic systems of labor division. By examining the subcontract system and sweatshops which substantially reinforce the collusion of local patriarchal social and economic system with the transnational capitalism, this essay reveals how the transnational corporations manipulate the cheap labor of Asian female workers without facing moral responsibility using subcontract system and further examine ethnic-based advertisement to the Asian countries at which their plants are located. The purpose of this essay is to raise such controversial issues in relation to two patriarchal economic systems on the surface and conclusively seek an alternative to centerizing women subjectivity from the marginalized and sublaternized positions by examining one Korean struggle with local and transnational capitalism.

Topics: Economies, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Livelihoods, Multi-National Corporations Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: South Korea

Year: 2009