Globalization and Gender Dynamics

Globalization and Gender Dynamics:
Globalisation can be seen as an ideology committed to production for profit, which leads to relative or absolute deprivation of women, colonies and marginal groups and communities. The exigencies of competition and market are used to enforce policies, which aims at profit making at the expense of people and planet.
Feminists all over the world have come to reject the profit-based market system which compels private ownership of all the earth’s goods and recognises only those goods and services, those things as valuable which can be bought and sold for profit on the market. This market does not value the work of nature and women. Feminists in developed countries are fighting for recognition of the value of the goods and services produced by them in homes. They are also fighting for men’s equal participation in such works.
They also demand recognition of the value of the social support provided by women in the form of childcare, health and educational services. They are also struggling both in North and South to maintain traditional pattern and capacities of subsistence in the face of devastating development process.
The phenomenon of globalisation and its commitment to commercialisation, modernisation, export-oriented development, growing reliance on private sector and the obsession with profit motive has adversely affected the cause of women in India also. There has been a sharp fall in women’s employment in the organised sector in the era of globalisation. The expansion of informal sector has put women in the category of reserved army. They have joined the rank of poor. This increasing feminisation of poverty is a matter of grave concern.
Even in today’s India patriarchal norms established nearly two thousand years ago continue to prevail. The media and the education system continue to project the ideals of motherhood and loyal and faithful wife. The subordinate position of women in society is reinforced by a look at declining sex ratio of girls, growing domestic violence of all kinds against women, the spurt in dowry deaths and rising rape cases.
Dreze and Sen hold that the persistence of sharp gender inequalities in many different forms is one of the most striking aspects of the Indian economy and it yields disparities in power, decision-making and well-being.
They are of the view that subordination of women in Indian society tends to impair their effectiveness in reducing deprivation in general. Woman’s emancipation in the form of basic education and economic independence can have many positive impacts.
Kerala is a shining example in this regard. There women’s emancipation has a direct impact on childcare and a noticeable check on fertility rate. The suppression of women from participation in social, political and economic life hurts the society as a whole, not just women. Women have often been active in demanding and working for basic social change. Social movements in general and women’s movement in particular should exert enough pressure on government so that proper policies for women’s emancipation should be made and also implemented.,