Tag: inequality

Ethnicity and Inequality in the UK 2017

The issue of why there are inequalities by ethnicity in the UK is a topic which runs all the way through the A level sociology syllabus. This post simply presents some sources which provide information on the extent of inequality in life chances by ethnicity in contemporary Britain.

As it stands, in 2017 it seems that:

  • ethnic minorities are less likely to be offered places at Britain’s top universities
  • ethnic minorities have higher rates of unemployment
  • ethnic minorities are more likely to be arrested, charged, prosecuted and imprisoned.

Ethnic minorities are less likely to be offered places at Britain’s top universities

Russel Group universities are less likely to provide ethnic minorities with offers of a place, even when grades and ‘facilitating subjects’ have been controlled for.

Univeristy ethnicity.jpg

White British students have the highest chance of being offered a place, with 52% of candidates receiving offers, while Black African students have the lowest chance, with only 35% of candidates receiving offers of places. (source: Manchester University Policy Blog, 2015) also see: (source: UCU research paper).

Oxford University has also been accused of being biased against Ethnic Minorities: according to Full Fact – in 2013 the Guardian revealed that only 17.2 percent of ethnic minority applicants were admitted to Oxford University, compared to 25.7 per cent of white applicants, and earlier this year (2017) MP David Lammy argued that this issue has not yet been addressed.

NB – It’s worth mentioning that the Russel Group universities, and Oxford University explain this away by saying that ethnic minority students are more likely to apply for more demanding courses for which they don’t necessarily have the grades, hence their higher rejection rate.

Ethnic minorities have higher unemployment rates

Ethnic Minorities are almost twice as likely to be unemployed compared to white people (source: ONS employment data)

In January – March 2017 the unemployment rate was 4.1% for white people compared to 7.9% for people from a BAME (Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic) background.

unemployment ethnicity UK 2017

There are significant variations by both specific ethnic and group and age: for example, Bangladeshi and Pakistani Britons have the highest unemployment rates relative to other ethnicity in all ages.

unemployment ethnicity age UK 2017.png

This difference is at least partially explained by the relatively high levels of unemployment among Pakistani and Bangladeshi females, which is significantly higher than male unemployment, a trend on found in these two ethnic groups.

ethnicity unemployment gender UK.png

Ethnic minorities are more likely to be charged for comparable offences

According to a recent study headed by David Lammy MP, ethnic minorities are more likely than white people to be arrested by the police, to be prosecuted by the CPS, and to be sentenced and jailed by judges and juries.

A Guardian article outlining the findings of the report (link above) notes that

‘Disproportional outcomes were particularly noticeable in certain categories of offences. For every 100 white women handed custodial sentences at crown courts for drug offences, the report found, 227 black women were sentenced to custody. For black men, the figure is 141 for every 100 white men.’

NB – It’s particularly interesting to note the disparities in sentencing for black women, suggesting a truly massive ‘intersectionality effect’

Race gender crime statistics UK

Comments/ Questions 

This is just a brief ‘update post’ providing links to some recent statistical evidence on ethnic inequalities across a range of topics in A-level sociology.

You should always question the VALIDITY of these statistics – the drug offences stats, for example, do not tell us the severity of offence. It may just be that all of those black women were caught smuggling drugs whereas white women are more likely to be caught ‘merely’ dealing them… not inconceivable!

Also, even if you accept that the stats have at least some validity, you’ll need to dig even deeper to deeper to find out why these inequalities in life chances by ethnicity still exist!

Related Posts

Ethnic inequalities in social mobility 

Criminal Justice, Ethnicity and Racism

Is Google Sexist?

In a memo published in August 2017 a (male) Google engineer suggested that gender inequality in the technology industry in general and Google in particular is not due to sexism, but due largely to biological differences between men and women.

The memo was called “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” and the guy who wrote it was James Danmore. His short answer to the question ‘is Google sexist’ would be ‘no, in fact quite the opposite – Google subscribes to a leftist ideology and actually practices unfair authoritarian discrimination in favor of women over men’.

Google's Ideological Echo Chamber

This memo is a great example of a New Right view on gender inequality – basically that men are naturally (biologically and psychologically) better suited to the demanding, analytical type of jobs that exist necessarily?) in a highly competitive tech industry.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai responded by saying that the memo suggested harmful gender stereotypes and sacked Danmore. Needless to say this whole incident has provoked a strong response from both the left and the right.

All I’m doing for now in this post is to summarise the key points of the work, to make it more accessible to students, as it’s an excellent example of a New Right point of view on gender roles. At some point I’ll get round to adding in some of the responses and criticisms of Danmore’s work.

Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber – A Summary of the Main Points

(Full Text – Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber)

Danmore starts off the article by outlining (crudely) the difference between left and right ideologies, before suggesting that his list of possible biological causes of the gender gap (below) are ‘’non-biased”

 It’s also worth mentioning that Danmore does qualify a lot of what he says, stating more than once that he doesn’t deny that sexism exists, he also states that there is considerable ‘biological overlap’ between men and women, so there are plenty of women who are biologically predisposed (as he would put it) towards techy jobs and leadership.

I’ve cut out quite a lot of the text, so as to just include the main arguments and evidence (there’s not much evidence cited) – anything in normal text is word for word from the original, anything italicised are my additions.

 Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech:

On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because:

  • They’re universal across human cultures
  • They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone
  • Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify and act like males
  • The underlying traits are highly heritable
  • They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective

Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.

Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.

Danmore includes the following diagrams to make his point:

Googles Ideological Echo Chamber

Personality differences

Women, on average, have more (this heading is linked to a Wikipedia article on sex differences in psychology)

  • Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas.
  • Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing).
  • These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing.
  • Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness. This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading.
  • Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance) – This may contribute to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.

In this section Danmore cites two journal articles (all other links are not academic so I haven’t included them) to back up his views:

Men’s higher drive for status

We always ask why we don’t see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs.

These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life.

Status is the primary metric that men are judged on, pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail.

Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths.

  • Danmore doesn’t cite any authoritative evidence to back up the views in this section. 

The rest of the document

There are four further sections in the document in which Danmore covers:

  • Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap – actually he makes some pretty sensible suggestions here IMO, such as making work more collaborative.
  • A section on the harm of Google’s biases
  • A section on ‘why we’re blind’ – i.e. why we’re blind to the apparent ‘objective truth’ of the fact that men are leaders because they’re less neurotic etc.
  • A final section of suggestions – in which he basically suggests that we should be more tolerant of conservative views and not discriminate in ‘authoritarian ways’.

 

 

The Effects of Poverty on Life Chances in the UK

From lower educational attainment to poor mental health, poverty negatively affects life chances in several ways.

Being in poverty has a negative effect on an individual’s life chances. Being poor means you are more likely to…

  • struggle to pay the bills and be financially vulnerable.
  • have to rent rather than buying your own house, which is correlated with poverty.
  • have to rely on Free School Meals for your children, which is correlated with lower educational achievement.
  • suffer poor health throughout your life and lower life expectancy.
  • suffer mental health problems throughout your life.
  • end up getting stuck in a debt-cycle, where you pay more to service the debt.

This post explores some of the statistical evidence on the relationship between poverty and life chances, looking at a range of evidence collected by the office for national statistics and other agencies such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The point of this post is simply to provide an overview of the statistics, and offer a critique of the limitations of these statistics. I’ll also provide some links to useful sources which students can then use to explore the data further.

What is Poverty?

There are different definitions and measurements of poverty, but one of the most widely used in the UK is relative poverty after housing costs (AHC). If household income is below 60% of the median household’s income, adjusted for family size and composition, they are in relative poverty.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation uses this measure along with two other thresholds, tracking relative poverty using a total of three poverty thresholds.

  • Poverty threshold: 60% of median income
  • Deep poverty threshold: 50% of median income
  • Very deep poverty threshold: 40% of median income. 

Relative poverty thresholds for 2020/2021

These are adjusted for household composition to reflect the different costs of living alone, compared to living in a couple, and with children. 

Weekly median income
2020/2021		Poverty threshold (60% of median)Deep poverty threshold (50% of median)Very deep poverty threshold (40% of median)
Single adult, no children £274£164£137£109
Couple two children £472£283£236£189
Lone parent, two children*£566£340£283£226
Couple two children*£764£458£382£306

*Assumes one child is aged under 14 and one 14 years or older. 

According to this measurement there were 13.5 million people, or 20% of the U.K. population living in low-income households in 2020 /21.

Life chances

Life chances are your chances of achieving positive outcomes and avoiding negative outcomes throughout the course of your life – such as succeeding in education, being happy, or avoiding divorce, poor health and an early death.

Five ways poverty affects life chances

Poverty negatively affects people’s life chances. Being poor means…

  1. You struggle to pay the bills (having to choose between heating or eating).
  2. You have to pay rent rather than owning your own home.
  3. You’re kids are more likely to fail their GCSEs.
  4. You were more likely to die from Covid.
  5. You’re more likely to suffer from poor mental health.

Poverty means you can’t pay the bills

Those earning lower incomes are more likely to struggle to pay their bills and suffer from other forms of financial vulnerability. 

Someone earning £10 000 a year is twice as likely to report not being able to save or struggling to pay the energy bills compared to someone earning £50 000 a year, and four times more likely to report not being able to afford unexpected expenses. 

56% of adults earning less than £10 000 a year reported that they found it difficult to afford energy bills compared to only 26% of adults earning more than £50 000 a year. 

38% said they were unable to afford hidden expenses compared to 10% of the richest quintile.

Office for National Statistics (ONS), released 20 February 2023, ONS website, article, Impact of increased cost of living on adults across Great Britain: September 2022 to January 2023

Being poor means you have to pay rent

Social renters are 4 times more likely to be in poverty than owner-occupiers

42% of social renters are in poverty after housing costs compared to just 10% of those who own their houses outright, without a mortgage 


Source: Joseph Rowntree Foundation: poverty rates and housing tenure.

Poverty leads to educational underachievement

Poor children are almost twice as likely to fail their GCSEs. 

In 2021 only 29.9% of Free School Meal Pupils (FSM) achieved grade 5 or above English and Maths compared to 57% of non FSM pupils.

Source: Department for Education: GSCE English and Maths Results.

Poverty and Covid Deaths

The Covid mortality rate for the poorest quintile of regions in the UK was double that of the richest quintile. 


Source: Joseph Rowntree Foundation: covid mortality rates and deprivation.

Poverty leads to poor mental health

Those with lower incomes are almost three times as likely to report being depressed compared to those with higher incomes. 

6% of people in the lowest quintile of earners report being depressed compared to 2% of those in the highest quintile of earners. 

Those in the lowest quintile are also more likely to report ‘lacking energy’ or ‘feeling worthless’, and more likely to report a number of conditions which correlate with poor mental health. 

Source: Joseph Rowntree Foundation:  Symptoms of anxiety in relation to household income.

Signposting

A closely related topic is wealth and income inequalities in the UK.

I usually teach this material as part of my introduction to sociology module.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Grenfell Tower – Profits before Safety?

This truly horrific, and avoidable tragedy seems to be a perfect illustration of the downsides of neoliberal policies – deregulation, cutting public services (such as social housing) and outsourcing to private companies are the three cornerstones of neoliberal economic policy – and the conflation of these three things together seem to be directly responsible for the deaths in Grenfell Tower.

Grenfell Tower neoliberalism
The official death toll for the Grenfell Tower is currently 79 people, although the actual number might be considerably higher.

NB – This isn’t just me saying this, below is an approximate quote by Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, in a speech given on 24th June:

‘The Grenfell Tower fire was a ‘direct consequence of Tory attitudes towards social housing… they think they are second class citizens, and thus they got second class fire safety standards. It is also a direct consequence of outsourcing and of deregulation” (video from The Independent).

Five things which suggest Kensington Council put profits before safety…

I’ve taken the  five pieces of evidence from a recent article in The Week : ‘The Grenfell Inferno: were profits put before safety’? (NB – as far as I can tell, this is only in the print copy of The Week, 24th June, Issue 1130).

One – The council ignored repeated warnings by Grenfell residents

Grenfell residents had repeatedly warned KCTMO that the building was unsafe:

  • rubbish blocking hallways was going uncollected
  • emergency lighting was inadequate
  • there was no fire escape (save the main stairs)
  • fire extinguishers weren’t being tested
  • repeated power surges had led to electrical appliances catching fire previously.
  • It was also claimed that on the night of the fire, the fire alarms failed.

The council’s response was to actually threaten one of those bringing up the issue of fire safety with legal action:

grenfell fire safety.png

Two – The council made a conscious choice to cut costs on social housing

The council had the money to make the Tower safe, but it chose not to spend it.

Amelia Gentlemen in The Guardian suggests that, in the context of the vast wealth in the borough, there is a strong suspicion that council officials ‘see social housing tenants, many of them immigrants, as a nuisance, occupying valuable land that could be sold off to developers at a vast profit’. 

Three – The council outsourced the recent refurbishment of Grenfell Tower to a firm called Rydon, which has a track record of putting profits before safety.

Rydon, which made a pre-tax profit of £14 million last year, won the contract over the councils ‘preferred contractor’ by undercutting them, despite the fact that another council, Sutton council, had recently cancelled a five year repairs contract with Rydon becaue its performance fell short of requirements.

Rydon Cladding.jpg

Rydon subcontracted out the Grenfell work to nine different companies, which raised ‘serious concerns about the quality of supervision and accountability’.

So it was Rydon that was the firm who would have agreed to install the non fire-proof cladding, rather than going for the fire-proof panels for an extra £5000.

Four – Deregulation has meant that landlords have managed to avoid acting on fire safety advice. 

Retrofitting sprinklers (which would have cost £200 000) was one of the recommendations made after a fire at Lakanal House in south London in 2009 killed nine people, but lawmakers decided not to make this mandatory – they left it up to landlords and councils to do so on a voluntary basis, and few did.

deregulation Grenfell
The Cabinet Office boasts how deregulation has reduced the rigor of fire safety inspections

Five – The incapable response by the council to the disaster

Despite an amazing voluntary response by the public, the ‘council was no where to be seen’ – even 24 hours after the fire, there was no centralised co-ordination from the council, no point of information about missing persons, and some residents were still sleeping rough 4 days later.

All of this suggests that the council see social housing tenants as second class citizens. 

Grenfell protests kensington.jpg

NB – the poor treatment is continuing several days later….According to The Guardian around 30 households were subsequently told by the council that they would have to move out their Holiday Inn accommodation because of previous bookings; some families have been asked to move several times.

The relevance of all of this to A-level sociology….

As I mentioned above, this tragedy can be used to illustrate downsides of neoliberal policies – deregulation, cutting public services (such as social housing) and outsourcing to private companies are the three cornerstones of neoliberal economic policy – and the conflation of these three things together seem to be directly responsible for the deaths in Grenfell Tower.

It’s also a useful reminder that poor people in rich (unequal) societies can be treated appallingly, suggesting that inequality is the main barrier to further social development in so called ‘developed’ countries like the United Kingdom.

I also think Bauman’s concept of ‘flawed consumers’ can be applied here – Bauman has long commented that capitalism produces ‘surplus people’ – those without the means to consume, and many of the Grenfell residents fit this category – and because they perform no useful function in a capitalist system (because they can’t buy that many things and keep profit flowing) these people are treated with contempt, as this case study clearly demonstrates.

As a final note, a harsh question I’d like people to consider is simply this – how many people in the U.K. genuinely believe that the state should guarantee a decent standard of housing for everyone, even if that means spending a few billion extra pounds at the national level, which in turn would mean an increasing in taxes?

Clearly the Kensington council leader, and probably most of the Tory party, think the state should provide no or minimal help to the poor in the form of social housing, that’s one of the main strands of neoliberal thought, but how many of those people cheering for Jeremy Corbyn at Glastonbury really believe the state should pay more towards social housing, especially if that means your council tax bill going up?

I have this uncomfortable feeling that while it’s easy to come together and hate the Tories, if you probed public opinion a little deeper, there probably wouldn’t be that much support for increased spending on social welfare, or that much commitment to giving serious thought about how to implement policies to make capitalism work better for the poor, let alone how to replace it with a post-capitalist order.

 

 

Right Wing American Media Bias

Identifying media bias through content analysis is a key skill in sociology. The American media is often accused of having a right-wing bias which means they will present a pro-capitalist, pro-business world view as normal and desirable and promote a neoliberal policy agenda. (1)

Below I analyse one newspaper article (about why 66 million Americans have no savings at all) to illustrate how agenda setting, or what and what isn’t included in the article, results in a subtle right-wing, neoliberal bias. 

The article is as follows: Can you guess how many Americans have absolutely no savings at all – BY KRISTEN DOERER AND PAUL SOLMAN  June 21, 2016

OK – It looks like it might be a lefty topic, because it’s about the precarious financial life of the poorest sections of American society, but there’s no class-based analysis focusing on how it’s mainly low-paid and temporary jobs in the context of 30 years neoliberal economics resulting in productivity gains, but increasingly unequal national income distribution meaning the very rich get richer, while most of the rest of us, especially the poor, get relatively poorer.

Having alerted us to these ‘shocking statistics’ (oh those poor, poor Americans), we are then told that this low-savings rate is spread among all households –

‘the problem is hardly confined to the poor. Yes, more than half of all households with an annual income under $30,000 have no emergency savings. But fully one in six households with an annual income between $50,000 and $75,000 had no emergency savings either’.

The article then goes on to talk about how Gen Y is better at saving than Gen X – the tone of which seems to blame 40 to 60 somethings for having too high consumption levels and not saving enough… (‘if your damn kids can save, then why not you too’?) –  here ignoring the following two important contextual facts:

  • (A) Gen Xrs were encouraged to consume in the context of a growing economy, then the neoliberal crash came in 2007, and here we are: hyper-precarity;
  • (B) OK Yes – Gen Yrs may appear to be better at saving, rather than avoiding debt, but why are they saving? I bet once you take out all of those saving to go travelling (and hence consuming) or saving for a mortgage (you now need a bigger deposit than your parents), you’d have similar rates of debt being racked up across the generations.

The article ends with the classic neoliberal trick of individualising the whole problem:

“The biggest barrier to saving is not being in the habit of saving,” says McBride. “You have to set some money aside with every paycheck.” Making it automatic can help, he advises. But no matter how you do it, start now.”

Ignoring the fact that for the typical person with no savings (mots of them are in low-paid jobs) there simply isn’t enough money left at the end of the week to put something extra by!

In summary: why don’t people save according to the narrow agenda of this right-wing, neoliberal article?

  • 40-60 somethings got into the habit of consuming too much.
  • It’s a problem which effects all levels of income
  • 20-30 somethings are much better at saving than their parents
  • Irresponsible parents need to learn from their kids and just save more….

What’s not considered/ emphasised 

  • There are 10-15% of American households which are in no position to save for emergencies
  • This is because 30 years of neoliberal policies have created precarious and low-paid jobs, which has meant productivity gains, the gains from which have gone disproportionately to the top 1%.
  • Generation Yrs are shit-scared of their futures and so are more likely to save compared to their parents.
  • We need state-intervention to redistribute wealth away from the richest 1% and back to the lowest paid workers who actually created this wealth through their labour power.

Notes

(1) I didn’t intend to write this today, it just sort of happened, I was actually looking up stats on inequality in America, and I got quite annoyed when I read (and thought) about the content of this article.

Related posts 

Do the media influence our voting behaviour? – Deals withe bias in newspaper reporting of the 2017 U.K. Election

Is America and underdeveloped country?

 

 

Globalisation and Global Development: Good Resources

Some useful links to good teaching resources for Globalisation and Global Development.

Good resources providing an overview of global trends and global inequalities:

Firstly, this 2016 video imagines the world as 100 people, and so illustrates what percentage of people live on less than $2 a day and so on (once you get through the ‘basic’ stuff on ethnicity/ religion etc…

A few stand-out facts are:

  • 1% of the population own 50% of the world’s wealth
  • 15% don’t have access to clean water
  • less than 50% have access to the internet

Secondly, Worldometers provides real time world statistics on population, the environment, food, health and media and society.

Global Statistics

A few stand-out facts are…..

  • The total number of malnourished people in the world is decreasing!
  • The total number of people with no access to clean drinking water is also decreasing!
  • HOWEVER, we’re losing approximately 20 HA a minute to desertification and 10 HA a minute to deforestation, which could undermine both of the above in the future.

Good resources for researching individual countries

  • The United Nation’s Country Profiles are probably the most accessible place to start – each country’s page gives you basic development indicators which you can then click on to expand.
  • The World Bank’s Open Data is also useful – follow the link and you can either search or browse by country.
  • The CIA World Fact Book is a useful source for more qualitative information on a country by country by country basis, organised into various categories such as geography, population, economics, politics and so on…

Good Resources for tracking ‘Indicators of Development’

Good Resources for other aspects of global development

More to follow shortly!

 

Barbie and the Development of Global Commodity Chains

One illustration of the global commodity chain can be found in the manufacture of the Barbie doll, the most profitable toy in history. The 50-something teenage doll sells at a rate of 2 per second, bringing the Mattel Corporation, based in Los Angeles, USA, well over a billion dollars in annual revenues. Although the doll sells mainly in the United States, Europe and Japan, Barbie can also be found in 150 countries around the globe: she is truly a global citizen.

Barbie is global not only in sales, but in terms of her birthplace as well. Barbie was never made in the United States. The first doll was made in Japan in 1959, when that country was still recovering from the Second World War and wages were low. As wages in Japan rose, Barbie moved to other low-wage countries in Asia. Her multiple origins today tell us a great deal about the operations of global supply chains.

Barbie is designed in United States, where her marketing and advertising strategies are devised and where most of the profits are made. But the only physical aspect of Barbie that is ‘made in the USA’ is her cardboard packaging, along with some of the paints and oils that are used to decorate the doll.

Barbie’s body parts and wardrobe span the globe in their origins:

  1. Barbie begins her life in Saudi Arabia, where oil is extracted and then refined into ethyne that is used to create her plastic body
  2. Taiwan’s state-owned oil importer, the Chinese Petroleum Corporation, buys the ethylene and sells it to Taiwan’s largest producer of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastics, which are used in the toys. Formosa plastics coverts the ethylene into the PVC pellets that will be shaped to make Barbie’s body.
  3. The pellets are then shipped to one of the four Asian factories that make Barbie – two in southern China, and one in Indonesia and one in Malaysia. The plastic mould injection machines that shape her body, which are most expensive part of Barbie’s manufacture, are made in the United States and shipped to the factories.
  4. Once Barbie’s body is moulded, she gets her nylon hair from Japan. Her cotton dresses are made in China, with Chinese cotton – the only raw material in Barbie that actually comes from the country where Barbie is made.
  5. Hong Kong plays a key role in the manufacturing process of Barbie – nearly all the material used in her manufacture is shipped into Hong Kong, one of the world’s largest ports – and then trucked to the factories in China. The finished Barbies leave by the same route. Some 23 000 trucks make the daily trip between Hong Kong and southern China’s toy factories.

Out of her retail price, China gets about 4%, mainly in wages paid to the 11 000 peasant women who assemble her, 6.5% covers all of the other aspects of the manufacturing and distribution process, 10% goes back to Matell in profit, and 80% is the mark-up which companies like Toys R Us who sell the product add to the cost.

The case study of Barbie shows us both the effectiveness of globalisation, and the unevenness of the process.

Sources used to write this post.

I took this from Giddens’ ‘Sociology’ (2009) – it may be old, but I liked it as an illustration of globalisation and global commodity chains.

 

Radical Feminism Applied to Globalisation, Gender and Development

Radical Feminists point out that Globalisation may actually be leading to new forms of exploitation of women, and that, despite globalisation generally improving the lives of women, there are still significant areas for improvement. Two examples of this include the emergence of the global sex-industry and the persistence of violence against women despite globalisation.

Globalisation and Modern Slavery

The most obvious example of globalisation opening up new forms of female exploitation is the rise of modern slavery, and especially the global sex industry.

The International Labour Organization estimates that there are 2.5 million trafficking victims who are living in exploitive conditions and another 1.2 million people who are trafficked across and within borders. These numbers include men, women, and children who are trafficked into forced labour or sexual exploitation, and appear to be on the rise worldwide. Women account for more than 50% percent of all trafficking victims. Globalization has provided for an easier means of exploiting those living in poverty who are seeking better lives, it also has provided for dramatic improvements in transportation and communications with which to facilitate the physical processing of persons.

Women are generally lured into slavery through promises of employment as shopkeepers, maids, nannies, or waitresses in developed countries. Upon arriving, these women are then told they have been purchased by someone and must work as a prostitute to repay the enormous debt they suddenly owe. To ensure that these women do not flee, their “owners” often subject them to beatings, take their documents upon arrival, and keep them under conditions of slavery. These women then either physically cannot go to the authorities or are fearful of being deported, especially if they do not have their documents or the documents were fraudulently obtained through their trafficker.

One of the main contributing factors to this increase in trafficking has been the widespread subjugation of women. Often ethnic minorities or lower class groups are more vulnerable to trafficking, because these women and girls have a very low social status that puts them at risk. Another contributor to the increase in trafficking is political and economic crisis in conflict or post-conflict areas. The breakdown of society and the rule of law have made these displaced populations vulnerable to the lure of a better future or an exit from their current countries.

Trafficking flourishes because it is a lucrative practice, generating from 7 to 12 billion dollars a year. In addition, the highly clandestine nature of the crime of human trafficking ensures that the great majority of human trafficking cases go unreported and culprits remain at large. There are reports that many human traffickers are associated with international criminal organizations and are, therefore, highly mobile and difficult to prosecute. Further complicating matters, sometimes members of the local law enforcement agencies are involved in trafficking. Prosecution is made difficult because victims of trafficking do not testify against traffickers out of fear for their and their family members’ lives.

South-East Asia and South Asia are considered to be home to the largest number of internationally trafficked persons, with estimates of 225,000 and 150,000 victims respectively.

Future for Women is a useful source for exploring this topic in more depth.

The Continuing prevalence of Violence Against Women

Radical Feminists also point out that physical and sexual violence against women also poses a significant threat to women’s health and safety.

In 2013, the WHO sponsored the first widespread study of global data on violence against women, and found that it constitutes a ‘global health problem of epidemic proportions.’ Intimate partner violence is the most common form of violence against women, and 38 percent of all women who have been murdered were murdered by an intimate partner. Women who experience physical and/or sexual partner violence are also 1.5 times more likely to acquire a sexually-transmitted infection.

Some traditional cultural practices impose threats to the health of women, and may be more difficult to change through educational and preventative policies than unhealthy practices that are unrelated to culture, such as nutrition. The UN Human Rights Commission identifies the practices most threatening to women as:

  • Female circumcision, known as female genital mutilation to its opponents, which involves the excision of a woman’s external sexual organs
  • Other forms of mutilation, such as facial scarring
  • Traditional practices associated with childbirth
  • The problem of dowries in some parts of the world
  • Honour killings
  • The consequences of preference for male babies, such as parental neglect and infanticide of female babies.

Female genital mutilation is a special focus of many efforts to end violence against women, although the movement to view it as a violation of human rights meets some resistance to what some consider a violation of family and community sanctity. Amnesty International says,

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the cornerstone of the human rights system, asserts that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. It protects the right to security of person and the right not to be subjected to cruel inhuman or degrading treatment — rights which are of direct relevance to the practice of female genital mutilation. The traditional interpretation of these rights has generally failed to encompass forms of violence against women such as domestic violence or female genital mutilation.

To explore this topic in more depth see this page from UN women.

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Modernisation Theory Applied to Gender Inequality

Modernisation Theory blames internal cultural factors for women’s subordination in the developing world. It is argued that some traditional cultures, and especially the religious ideas that underpin the values, norms, institutions and customs of the developing world, ascribe status on the basis of gender. In practise, this means that males are accorded patriarchal control and dominance over a range of female activities and, consequently, women have little status in developing societies.

Modernisation theorists note that gender equality is generally greater in more developed countries and believe that there is relationship between modernisation, economic growth and greater gender equality. The World Bank appears to be a strong proponent of this view today.

Trade, Economic Growth and Gender Equality

Below is an extract from a recent World Bank report on Globalisation, Economic Growth and Gender Equality.

Trade openness and the spread of information and communication technologies (ICTs) have increased women’s access to economic opportunities and in some cases increased their wages relative to men’s. Growth in exports, together with a decline in the importance of physical strength and a rise in the importance of cognitive skills, has increased the demand for female labour. ICT has also increased access to markets among female farmers and entrepreneurs by easing time and mobility constraints.

Women have moved out of agriculture and into manufacturing and particularly services. These changes have taken place across all countries, but female (and male) employment in the manufacturing and services has grown faster in developing than developed countries, reflecting broader changes in the global distribution of production and labour. In Mexico, for example, female employment in manufacturing grew from 12 percent in 1960 to 17 percent in 2008, with 10 times more women in 2008 than in 1960.

International peer pressure has also led more countries than ever to ratify treaties against discrimination, while growing media exposure and consumers’ demands for better treatment of workers has pushed multinationals toward fairer wages and better working conditions for women.

Increased access to information, primarily through wider exposure to television and the Internet, allows countries to learn about life and social mores in other places—knowledge that can change perceptions and ultimately promote adoption of more egalitarian attitudes. Increased economic empowerment for women can reinforce this process by promoting changes in gender roles and allowing newly empowered women to influence time allocation, shift relative power within the household, and exercise agency more broadly.

Countries with a comparative advantage in the production of female labour-intensive goods have lower fertility rates and, to a lesser extent, higher female labour force participation and educational attainment. For instance, moving from low female-intensity in exports (bottom quarter of the distribution) to high intensity (top quarter) lowers fertility by as much as 0.21 births per woman, or about 10 percent of the global total fertility rate.

Globalisation could also influence existing gender roles and norms, ultimately promoting more egalitarian views: women turned income earners may be able to leverage their new position to change gender roles in their households by influencing the allocation of time and resources among house- hold members, shifting relative power within the households, and more broadly exercising stronger agency. In fact, women appear to gain more control over their income by working in export-oriented activities, although the impact on well-being and agency is more positive for women working in manufacturing and away from their male relatives than for those work- ing in agriculture. Women in factories feel their status has improved.

Women in work also marry and have their first baby later than other women of similar socioeconomic status and to have better quality housing and access to modern infrastructure. They also report greater self-esteem and decision-making capacity, with benefits extending to other family members.

Beyond the economic sphere, increased access to information, primarily through higher exposure to television and the Internet, has also ex- posed many in developing countries to the roles women play in other parts of the world, which may affect gender roles and outcomes (chapter 4). For instance, in Brazil, a country where soap opera watching is ubiquitous and cuts across social classes, the presence of the Globo signal (a television channel that offers many popular Brazilian soap operas) has led to lower fertility, measured as the number of live births for women ages 15–49.

Similarly, evidence from rural India suggests that gender attitudes among villagers changed with cable television. Women with access to cable were less likely than others to express a son preference or to report that it is acceptable for a husband to beat his wife.

Interestingly, and somewhat contrary to standard notions about gender roles and women’s agency in the household, the evidence discussed here suggests that under some circumstances exposure to information can induce large and fast change. In Bangladesh, the employment of hundreds of thousands of women in the ready-made garment industry feminized the urban public space, creating more gender-equitable norms for women’s public mobility and access to public institutions. In the process, Bangladeshi women had to redefine and negotiate the terms of purdah, typically reinterpreting it as a state of mind in contrast to its customary expression as physical absence from the public space, modest clothing, and quiet demeanour.

Source for above – http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTWDR2012/Resources/7778105-1299699968583/7786210-1315936222006/chapter-6.pdf

Evaluations of Modernisation theory applied to gender

There is a very strong correlation between increasing trade economic growth and gender empowerment. Further evidence for this lies in this recent 2020 report from the World Bank.

However there are also some criticisms of this view:

Firstly, economic growth does not always result in gender equality – Japan and Saudi Arabia are two notable examples here and there is no country on earth yet has actual gender parity.

Economic development might even harm gender equality in some ways – according – if women are just exploited more because of their lower status, for example.

Thirdly, even though from our Western perspective we think of challenging traditional cultures as the right thing to do, but this could be regarded as ethnocentric.

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Global Gender Inequalities – A Statistical Overview

Gender inequality is an extremely important aspect of development. Even if we put aside the significant social justice issues associated with the historical power differences between men and women, when you have half the population that are disempowered with less access to education, employment and healthcare, that alone is enough to drastically skew the social development statistics downwards!

Hence there is an argument that promoting gender equality should be the primary development goal, simply because it’s the easiest way to have a positive knock on effect in every other area of social life.

Global Gender Inequalities in 2020

The United Nations notes that

The commitment to achieving gender equality remains unfulfilled:

  • In 2019, one in five young women aged 20 to 24 was married in childhood (down from one in four in 2004). In Sub-Saharan Africa, one in three young women was still married in childhood.
  • In 2020, almost 25% of MPs in national parliaments were women (up slightly from 22.3 per cent in 2015). Women hold 36 per cent of elected seats in local parliaments.
  • In 2019, 28 per cent of managerial positions in the world were occupied by women (up from 25 per cent in 2000).
  • Women are still less likely to work than men. They make up half of the world’s working-age population but only 39 per cent of the world’s workers.
  • Only 55% of married or in-union women aged 15 to 49 made their own decisions regarding sexual and reproductive health and rights.
  • In 2019, 73 per cent of the laws and regulations needed to guarantee full and equal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights were in place (based on data from 75 countries).
  • At least 200 million girls and women have been subjected to female genital mutilation (data from 31 countries where the practice is concentrated). The harmful practice is becoming less common, but progress is not fast enough to meet the global target of its elimination by 2030.

The coronavirus pandemic is hitting women and girls harder than men:

  • Globally, women make up three quarters of medical doctors and nursing personnel.
  • Women already spend three times as many hours as men on unpaid care work at home. The closure of school and day-care centres has put an extra burden on women to provide home-learning for their children.
  • Reports from several countries suggest that domestic violence against women and children is also rising during the global lockdown.

Statistics on Global Gender Inequality

The World Economic Forum produces the Global Gender Gap Report, which in 2020 noted that none of us will see global gender equality in our life time as it will take almost 100 years to achieve global gender equality at current rates of progress!

It measures gender inequality by using 14 indicators in 4 categories:

  • Economic Participation and Opportunity
  • Educational attainment
  • Health and Survival
  • Political Empowerment

It reports similar global stats to the United Nations, but is more useful for finding out the country rankings by gender inequality. If you download the report and scroll to the back, you can even look at each individual country’s score card for each indicator.

Another ‘gender equality world ranking’ system is The Women Peace and Security Index. This is a bit more niche/ focused than the WEF report and measures gender inequality in countries by using 11 indicators in 3 categories:

  • Inclusion
  • Security
  • Justice

The world country rankings for both the above two monitoring tools are similar:

2019-2020Global Gender Gap ReportWomen Peace and Security Index
Top five countries for gender equalityIceland
Norway
Finland
Sweden
Nicaragua		Norway
Switzerland
Finland
Denmark
Iceland
Bottom five countries for gender equalityDRC
Syria
Pakistan
Iraq
Yemen		South Sudan
Pakistan
Syria
Afghanistan
Yemen

The countries with the highest ‘Peace and Security Scores’ for Women.

Discussion Questions

Explore the rankings above. (1) Are you surprised by any of the results. (2) Do you think any of these indicators are more valid/ important than others as measurements of gender equality?

Sources

The United Nations – Progress towards SDG Five – improving gender equality.

The World Economic Forums The Global Gender Gap Report

The Women Peace and Security Index – findings summarised by National Geographic

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NB the material below is from 2017 and is pending an update, which will be forthcoming! (You know the score, not enough time to update everything as often as you’d like!)

Gender Inequalities in Employment

For every dollar earned by men, women earn 70-90 cents.

Women are less likely to work than men – Globally in 2015 about three quarters of men and half of women participate in the labour force. Women’s labour force participation rates are the lowest in Northern Africa, Western Asia and Southern Asia (at 30 per cent or lower).

When women are employed, they are typically paid less and have less financial and social security than men. Women are more likely than men to be in vulnerable jobs — characterized by inadequate earnings, low productivity and substandard working conditions — especially in Western Asia and Northern Africa. In Western Asia, Southern Asia and Northern Africa, women hold less than 10 per cent of top-level positions.

When all work – paid and unpaid – is considered, women work longer hours than men. Women in developing countries spend 7 hours and 9 minutes per day on paid and unpaid work, while men spend 6 hours and 16 minutes per day. In developed countries, women spend 6 hours 45 minutes per day on paid and unpaid work while men spend 6 hours and 12 minutes per day.

Gender Inequalities in Education

The past two decades have witnessed remarkable progress in participation in education. Enrollment of children in primary education is at present nearly universal. The gender gap has narrowed, and in some regions girls tend to perform better in school than boys and progress in a more timely manner.

However, the following gender disparities in education remain:

  • 31 million of an estimated 58 million children of primary school age are girls (more than 50% girls)
  • 87 per cent of young women compared to 92 per cent of young men have basic reading and writing skills. However, at older age, the gender gap in literacy shows marked disparities against women, two thirds of the world’s illiterate adults are women.
  • The proportion of women graduating in the fields of science (1 in 14, compared to 1 in 9 men graduates) and engineering (1 in 20, compared to 1 in 5 men graduates) remain low in poor and rich countries alike. Women are more likely to graduate in the fields related to education (1 in 6, compared to 1 in 10 men graduates), health and welfare (1 in 7, compared to 1 in 15 men graduates), and humanities and the arts (1 in 9, compared to 1 in 13 men graduates).
  • There is unequal access to universities especially in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. In these regions, only 67 and 76 girls per 100 boys, respectively, are enrolled in tertiary education. Completion rates also tend to be lower among women than men. Poverty is the main cause of unequal access to education, particularly for girls of secondary-school age.

Gender Inequalities in Health

Women in developing countries suffer from….

  • Poor Maternal Health (support during pregnancy) – As we saw in the topic on health and education, maternity services are often very underfunded, leading to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary female deaths as a result of pregnancy and child birth every year.
  • Lack of reproductive rights – Women also lack reproductive rights. They often do not have the power to decide whether to have children, when to have them and how many they should have. They are often prevented from making rational decisions about contraception and abortion. Men often make all of these decisions and women are strongly encouraged to see their status as being bound up with being a mother.

Gender Inequalities in the Experience of Overt Violence

Around the world, women are more likely to be…

  • Victims of Violence and Rape – Globally 1/3 women have experience domestic violence, only 53 countries have laws against marital rape.
  • Missing: More than 100 million women are missing from the world’s population – a result of discrimination against women and girls, including female infanticide.
  • At risk from FGM – An estimated 3 million girls are estimated to be at risk of female genital mutilation/cutting each year.
  • Girls are more likely to be forced into marriage: More than 60 million girls worldwide are forced into marriage before the age of 18. Almost half of women aged 20 to 24 in Southern Asia and two fifths in sub-Saharan Africa were married before age 18. The reason this matters is because in sub‐Saharan Africa, only 46 per cent of married women earned any cash labour income in the past 12 months, compared to 75 per cent of married men

Gender Inequalities in Politics

  • Between 1995 and 2014, the share of women in parliament, on a global level, increased from 11 per cent to 22 per cent — a gain of 73 per cent, but far short of gender parity.

Sources

Most of the above information is taken from the sources below…

The World’s Women: Trends and Statistics (United Nations)

The Global Gender Gap Report (Video link) (Rankings)

WomanKind