Abstract

Sri Lanka offers an interesting paradox of social advancement and economic stagnation in the context of globalization. Sri Lankan women in spite of enjoying better status and position compared to other developing countries, have low levels of participation in economic activity. In such a setting, this study aims to take a fresh look at the current situation of gender equality in the labour market in Sri Lanka. This is particularly important in view of the fact that in developing countries like Sri Lanka the potential gender implications of economic contribution are arguably more important than all others. In this study, the author shows that globalization has led to marginalization and has created gender inequality in the labour market in Sri Lanka.

Key words: globalization, gender equality, marginalization

1. INTRODUCTION

Globalization, with regulation of economies, has the potential to be a powerful contributor to gender equality, as a creator of new economic opportunities for women. However, these positive effects are still only potential and need to be unleashed. Therefore there is much controversy surrounding the actual impact of globalization, particularly in terms of gender equity.

It has been said that the globalization of production has meant a feminization of the global labour force.  But increasing feminization of poverty over the past few decades is much visible.  What then has happened to the contribution of the huge feminized labour force to economies?  Perhaps it is no coincidence that of the 1.3 billion people living in poverty worldwide, 70 percent are women.  Women constitute the bulk of the labour force in global production, economic activity rates rising over the past thirty years. Yet, they are still concentrated in low-paid positions at the lowest rungs of the occupational hierarchy.

Producers around the world have aimed to maximize their profits and have been introducing production techniques that change skill and job structures by “deskilling” or “upgrading”.  In other words there has been a trend of skill polarization.  In that sense, a minority of workers are required to possess specialist skills while the majority are required to possess minor training and skills.  This has automatically led to fewer workers in progressive jobs, while more are in static jobs involving little upward occupational mobility.

How has this trend shaped the gender division of labour?  According to standing (1989), women have a high labour turnover.  If there were less benefit to enterprises from workers’ on-the-job experience, that reason for discrimination would be removed.  Indeed for many monotonous jobs high labour turnover may have a positive value for employers, since maximum efficiency may be reached after only a few months, thereafter plateauing or declining.  This may be one reason for resorting to casual or temporary labour. This paper will give insight into whether the impact of globalization has been to marginalize women workers in Sri Lanka through the above mentioned polarization effect.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 summarizes an overview of the situation of Sri Lankan women. The paper then turns to section 3 where attempts are made to present the theoretical background of the study. Section 4 presents the methodology and the fourth section discusses about major findings. The final section concludes with further suggestions.

2. OVERVIEW OF SRI LANKAN WOMEN

In its country reports for Sri Lanka, the Asian Development Bank describes the situation of Sri Lankan women as follows: “the situation of women in Sri Lanka has been influenced by patriarchal values embedded in traditional, colonial and post independence societies, by relatively liberal traditional laws and gender inequality reflected in the legal system, and by norms introduced during the British colonial administration” (p. 1).

Sri Lanka women have traditionally played an important role in economic contribution to the whole economy, to their families’/households’ income as well as to Gross National Product (GNP). When compared to other South Asian counterparts, Sri Lankan women are enjoying higher life expectancy (74 years) and nearly universal literacy rate (above 80%) that is unmatched in the rest of the subcontinent. Sri Lankan women are less vulnerable to discrimination by societal oppression like son preference, dowry deaths, and widow immolation. Traditionally Sri Lankan women have not been subjected to repugnant socio-cultural practices such as purdah (female seclusion), circumcision, foot binding, and child marriage or polygamy, which have been and continue to be prevalent to various degrees in several countries of the region (United Nations, 1997).

Table 1 provides a profile of the gender gap in measures of success in education, comparing Sri Lanka with West and South Asian countries in year 2005. When considering the combined gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary level, Sri Lankan females are better than all other South Asian counterparts and also better off than Sri Lankan males. Nevertheless, Sri Lankan women are not significantly better off in terms of ratio of estimated female to male income.

A skilled and educated work force is widely believed to be a pre-requisite for economic development. When we compare the distribution of Sri Lankan female undergraduate’s university entrants over different fields during the past 25 years or so, women have made considerable headway in entering those fields of studies traditionally dominated by men.

Table 1 Gender Gap in Measures of Success in Education: Sri Lanka Comparison with West and South Asian Countries-2005

Source: Human Development Report-2005

Sri Lankan women also constitute a very significant proportion of students enrolled in various post graduate level courses. One important conclusion that emerges from the discussion in the preceding sections concerns the relation between occupation status in the female work force and the educational achievement of the women. If the return to the education is low, it acts as a barrier to investment in the education of female children.  Hence education has to be viewed as a dynamic factor which acts as a major agent in the perpetuation of women’s economic disadvantage in the labour market and their contribution to the development.

The overall labour force participation rates or persons in the labour force as proportion of the population aged 10 years and over are given in Table 2.  It is evident that while the overall participation rate for males declined with some fluctuations, from 69.3 per cent in 1963 to 65.3 percent in 1996, that female participation increased almost steadily, from 20.0 to 33.5 percent in the same time period. In recent years an important factor responsible for the rapid expansion of female labour force participation rate is the establishment of export processing zones in Sri Lanka.

Table 2 Overall Labour-Force Participation Rates of Persons Aged 10 years and Over by Sex: Censuses of 1963 to 1981 and Labour Force Surveys of 1885/86, 1992, 1995, 1996, and 2003/2004

Sources: Department of Census and Statistics, Reports of the Censuses of Population and Housing of 1963, 1971 and 1981; and Reports of the Sri Lanka Labour Force Surveys of 1985/86, 1992 and 1996, 2003/2004

In Sri Lanka as in most other developing countries, unemployment is reported to be a problem affecting educated persons. An analysis of unemployment rates by level of educational attainment of the unemployed (Table 3) indicates that these rates are increasing among females more than males. As noted by the following figures, for instance, female unemployment rates are significantly higher than males in the GCE advanced level and higher educated group. Thus, contrary to the general perception that education helps upward occupational mobility, educated women in Sri Lanka experience greater difficulty in finding employment than their male counterparts.

Table 3 Unemployment Rates by Educational Level and Sex: 1985/86 and 1994

Sources: Department of Census and Statistics, Sri Lanka Labour Force Surveys of 1985/86 and 1994 (First Quarter).

3. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

A theoretical connection between globalization, employment and women’s status has been central to macro theories of social change and gender stratification.  Thus the basic modernization arguments suggest that modernization leads to women’s emancipation from traditional subordinated roles by integrating with new job opportunities in the industrial and service sectors (Caldwell, 1982; Goode, 1963). Meanwhile, the gender literature has often disagreed with modernization theory as Boserup (1970) and others have argued that industrial capitalism displaces and marginalizes women from productive activities in the market and importance at home.

Generally the theories regarding female labour Force and development can be classified into three categories: the marginalization approach, the exploitation approach, and the dependency/world-system approaches (Elliot, 1977: 1-8; Taplin, 1989: 7-45; Tiano, 1987: 216-218). The marginalization and the exploitation approaches have made considerable contributions to the women-gender and development literature. The marginalization thesis says that women are isolated from production and political control.  This leads to a disadvantaged status for women.  According to the marginalization thesis, despite the ideology of egalitarianism, development has generally increased women’s economic and social marginality.

There is now a widespread recognition of gender dimensions of globalization, and liberalization in developing countries, and a growing literature explores both conceptual and empirical aspects of this issue.  Important contributions to this literature have been made by, among others, Berik and Cagatay (1990), Elson (1996), Joekes(1995), Ozler (1999), Pearson (1998), and Standing (1989). Some of the most significant works have been concerned with the relationship between exports, female employment and women’s wages in developing countries.  There is evidence of increasing participation of women in the industrial labour force. Particularly in export-related industries, women concentrated in low grade, low-paid work and the persisting, and substantial, sex differential in earnings.

4. METHODOLOGY

The author argues that “women’s opportunities are said to be restricted by ideas among employers that only certain low level limited jobs can be performed by women.  Women are thus said to be crowded into certain segments of the employment markets where wages and conditions are lower than their male counterparts.  This situation has been increased by the pressure from globalization. This phenomenon can be called marginalization of female labour”.

It is widely believed that female workers have been affected much more than male by the rapid expansion of export processing zones (EPZs) with the huge flow of foreign direct investments to the developing countries.  In Sri Lanka EPZs is one of the main components of the foreign investment-led export-oriented industrialization strategy. They can be thought of as the vehicle of globalization.  When global production networks or chains are constructed, EPZs provide this link (ILO, 1998).  The use of mainly female labour in export assembly industries appears to be a widespread  phenomena in developing countries and is often seen as part of the international search for cheap  labour by industries which are labour intensive (Safa, 1980).  Due to above reason EPZs in Sri Lanka are considered as a major study area for analyzing impacts of globalization. The data for this study come from mainly 3 types of sources. First-hand data were collected by questionnaire survey from all the multinationals investing in three major EPZs since 1988. Secondary data are utilized from various published and unpublished reports.  Macro data come from the Report on Consumer Finances and Socio Economic Survey in Sri Lanka. This is island wide representative survey gathered 6-9 years times using a multistage method.

5. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The data were used to measure the female intensity in various sectors in nationally as well as in the EPZs. The calculations compared the trends in female intensity by occupational status. Results are presented in two steps; first introduce the macro analysis of national data, and secondly analysis of the EPZs.

In Sri Lanka the economy responded to the new liberalization economic policy reforms started in 1977 and corresponding to this performance, employment increased for both men and women. But labour absorption patterns reported in the data indicate a significant contrast between men and women in different occupational strata’s.

Figure 1 shows the occupational distribution of the female work force under different categories. The total number of women workers employed at the administrative level has diminished over time while the total number of females employed at a low occupational status has increased dramatically.  After 1986 the gap between these two has widened in nationally.  It is evident from the relevant data that the majority of women workers are employed in low level jobs. Figure 2 indicates the same trend for the male workers in the labour market. While the female trend shows widening gap between the decision-making positions and the low level occupational level male trend show a much parallel line.  After 1985 the elementary low level trend shows a slight decline in male labours.

Figure 1 Evolution of the Distribution of the Female Work Force (Percentage) in the Occupational Hierarchy–since 1971

Source: Author’s Computations Based on the Macro Level Data

Employment creation for the growing labour force has been a major problem confronted by successesive governments in Sri Lanka since independence. During the past five decades, the slowest growth in employment was observed in the 1953-1963 period. The annual growth of employment during that period was 0.9 percent. The liberalization of the labour market brought benefit for unemployed Sri Lankans. The unemployment rate was estimated to be around 24.5 percent in 1973, and declined to 15 percent by 1982 (Central Bank, 1982). 

Figure 2 Evolution of the Distribution of the Male Work Force (percentage) in the Occupational Hierarchy–Since 1971

Source: Author’s Computations Based on the Macro Level Data

Youth unrest was the trump card of the United National Political Party [1] in the pre-1977 period in Sri Lanka, and social crisis prevalent at the time paved the way for the introduction of EPZs as the very practical solution to huge unemployment (around 24 percent).  The EPZs provided 175,000-200,000 new employment opportunities during the period of 1977-1982, and labour force was increased at an average of 138,600 persons per annum (Central Bank, 1995). The direct local employment provided by the EPZs enterprises increased from 261 in 1978 to 241,970 in 1996. Out of them 65 percent were employed in the textile and garment product group. Colombo, Biyagama, and Koggala EPZs alone have provided 86,182 employment opportunities while other enterprises have provided 155,788 employment opportunities (Central Bank, 1999). Gender-wise 80.5 percent of EPZ workers represent the female labour. In 1978/79 EPZ firms contribution to total labour force in Sri Lanka was 0.0056 percent, and this increased drastically in 2001 up to 6.1. The ratio of this number to total industrial labour force was 36.52 percent. 

Another dimension of the employment front can be observed in relation to the status of employment. Among other implications, this tendency illustrates the increasing insecurity of employment for women working in these EPZs. Data presented in Figure 3 show that with time the unskilled female labour force has increased far more than the unskilled male labour force.

This imbalance of labour market position once criticized by Jayaweera (2000) as “While women are thus concentrated at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy, the access of qualified women to the highest decision making position in the private and public sectors continues to be impeded by the “Glass ceiling” created chiefly by gendered norms and consequently by conscious or unconscious gender bias” (pp 99).

Figure 3 Evolution of the Gender Composition of Labour in EPZs since 1988 (Low level occupational strata)

Source: Authors computations based on Data collected from the Survey

While there has been a dramatic increase in unskilled female labour force in the EPZs, decision making positions such as managerial and professional level jobs are offered for males.  As shown in Figure 4 the proportion of employed males under these higher-level occupational categories has increased significantly with time.

Women have responded to the demand for low-cost females labour created by the major shift to export industrialization while they concomitant developments and face the underscore working condition that has drive to expand these multinationals had an exclusive profit. As cited by Gunatilaka, (1999).

It appears that in the context of the Sri Lankan economy, globalization has led to employment gains for women relative to men in EPZs. At the same time women continue to be employed in low skill and low paid jobs. This condition affects the whole economy in a negative way. If women are crowded into industries that produce price elastic good, and this practice may have implications for trade patterns and economic growth. As an example if these industries are concentrated where price elasticities of demand are relatively high, this may artificially lower women’s wages, due to their restricted bargaining power.However, women are mainly concentrated in low-skilled, menial, and repetitive jobs and in the lower echelons of the industrial hierarchy in what is virtually an extension of their household activities. Lack of education and training opportunities, employer biases, and limited mobility due to social responsibilities combine to keep them at these lower echelons.

Figure 4 Evolution of the Gender composition of Labour in Higher-Level Occupational Hierarchy in EPZs since 1988

Source: Authors Computations based on Data Collected from the Survey

Those above analysis proved that women are underrepresented in the decision making positions in the national labour market in the Sri Lanka.  When consider the political representative position women are in unfavourable condition.  This condition has discussed in details in the chapter 3 in this theses.  As Leitan, (2000) said “Regrettably, there does not seem to be an appreciable increase in female representation even after more than 68 years of universal franchise and 50 years of independence” (pp 118).

6. CONCLUSIONS

The female share of paid employment has steadily increased over the last two decades.  Unfortunately; those new economic opportunities for young women are based on conditions and treatment inferior to male workers. Despite the growth in female employment opportunities with the impact of globalization, available data and information clearly indicate that women workers are generally concentrated in low skill-low status and low paid jobs both nationally and in export multinational companies. It appears that gender equality in formaleducation has not yet contributed to women’s acquiring an equal or fair share in the labour market in the Sri Lankan case.

It is obvious from the study from macro and micro level analysis that globalization has automatically led to fewer female workers are in progressive jobs while more in static jobs involving little upward occupational mobility.

In sum, the Sri Lankan experience over the past three decades points out that globalization has led to marginalized female labour and has widened gender inequality.

Note:
Original paper presented at the Gender, Work and Organization Conference 2005 at Keele University, UK. 2005

About the author:
Sriyani Mangalika Meewalaarachchi is a doctoral Student attached to Department of International development in University of Nagoya, Japan. She pursued B.Sc degree in the field of Agriculture and MBA degree form University of Peradeniya Sri Lanka Currently her research interest is on impact of globalization on gender in Sri Lankan labour market.  Her E-Mail address is: mangali2005@yahoo.com. Contact address is -465-0065, Umemoriso 11-312, Umemorizaka, Meito ku, Nagoya, Japan.

[1] The opposite political party at that time. This was elected as the new government in 1977.   

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