Source: Focus on Trade

NEOLIBERALISM THROUGH THE EYES OF WOMEN
Joo-Yeon Jeong & Seung-Min Choi*

There is no place on Earth where neo-liberalism has not poisoned.
It has allowed a handful of private interests to control as much as
possible of social life in order to maximize personal profit. It has
poisonous effects especially in the Third World, where imperial
powers continue to pirate natural and human resources to fill the
pockets of transnational capitalists. Initiated by Reagan and
Thatcher, for the last two decades, neo-liberalism has become the
dominant economic and political trend for much of the leftist (so
they identify themselves) governments as well as the right.

However, as women fighting against global capitalism and its new
phase, as women yearning for a better world where we will not be
exploited and abused, we must go a step further into looking into
this 'neo-liberalism' through the experiences of women. And it is
not just about how women linearly experience it - we must go into
the depths to manifest how neo-liberalism operates in a very
gender-biased way.

WOMEN WORKERS AS SCAPEGOATS
In Korea, the process of being absorbed into global capitalism
began earlier than the economic crisis, during the economic 'hyper
'-development era of military dictatorship of Park Jung-Hee, with
quite a bit of help from the US. Fluctuating together with global
economic crises, the Korean economy started to show signs of a
recession from the early 90s, as rate of profit decreased. Thus,
capitalists started to adopt policies of introducing flexibility to the
labour market. It was 'experimented' on women workers first before
taking full force on the entire working class at the end of the
millennium.

Jobs where women were predominant started to be transformed in
the 1980s, beginning in the form of dispatch labour and eventually
expanding to generalisation of irregular labour. However, this
process was mainly targeted at women workers and the male-
oriented labour movement did not give much importance to it, even
though women worker's movement consistently called for the
address of the issue.

Although the incorporation of Korean economy into the global
capitalist system had already started around a decade ago, Korean
people came to experience its destructive nature during and after
the economic crisis of 1997. The structural adjustment program of
the IMF shook the labour market and massive lay-offs were
implemented. In particular, women workers were laid off first, and
the working conditions of women workers fell to the ground.

The methods that the management used was subcontracting or
abolishing those production lines and business sectors where
women were predominant. Women in these places were usually
typists or clerical assistants, who were considered not important
and cumbersome, and thus provided the logic and justification for
the lay-offs. Many companies would lay-off these women, and
instead employ workers from dispatch companies - thus providing
the management with ways in which to decrease labour costs and
evade provision of insurances and benefits. Or in the case of
banks, the same worker would be reemployed, but on a contract
basis as irregular workers, again to decrease labour costs. Another
method of laying off women workers or transforming them into
irregular workers, was targeting foremost women who were married
to someone in the same workplace, and also those who were
pregnant or were on their maternal leave. They provided the
management with strong justifications based on patriarchal values
of 'women's place is at home'. This process of unjust and
discriminatory lay-offs at the onset of the economic crisis saw the
deterioration of maternal protection and women worker's rights in
general. The achievements that the women worker's movement had
accomplished over the last couple of decades were undermined.

"FLEXIBILITY" OF WOMEN WORKERS
The massive lay-offs that occurred after 1997 was obviously not
'inevitable' on the part of the management, but was a calculated
process of increasing the rate of profit through flexibility of the
labour market. Because the need for lay-offs did not come simply
from decrease in production, workers who were laid off were re-
employed, but as irregular workers. And because flexibility
measures were implemented foremost on women, women were
also absorbed again in masses into the labour market, but this
time as irregular workers with low wages and low protection.

Attaining flexibility of women workers was backed up by the
patriarchal ideology of 'male as breadwinner' [1]. Through this
ideology, women workers are considered not really as workers, but
as 'assistant income providers', the ideology that contributes to
devaluation of women's work. And this in turn provided the
justification for the primary lay-offs of women and transforming
women's jobs into irregular jobs - a justification that quelled the
possibility of resistance from the working class. Recently,
capitalist institutions and mainstream media elaborate that the rate
of women's employment is increasing faster that the rate of men.
On one hand, this is due to the increase in absolute number of jobs-
irregular jobs for women, but also due to the fact that women do
not have much choice than take up highly unstable jobs without
any hesitation to earn a living, whereas men can afford to be more
'selective'.

Now, the percentage of irregular workers is risen to higher levels
than regular workers. In analyzing a census on the economically-
active workforce implemented by the Korean Statistical Office in
August 2001, the Korea Labor & Society Institute (www.klsi.org)
estimated the number of irregular workers to be 7.37 million,
constituting 55.7% of the total workforce. [2] According to studies
made in 2000, out of entire irregular workers, the percentage of
women is higher than that of men at 53%, and within the entire
women workforce irregular workers take up 70%. These official
statistics exclude specially employed labour (for example, the type
of jobs that capitalists characterise as self-employment) such as
private tutors, insurance sales, golf caddies etc., so if these jobs
are included, the rate of irregular women workers will definitely
rocket.

Irregular work pertaining to capital's flexibility measures has
brought deterioration of working conditions and impoverishment for
workers of both genders. But it has affected women workers more
severely. At the moment, most of irregular women workers are
employed in small enterprises of less than 10 employees. It has
driven women's work into the ditches and has also increased
mental stress from lack of self-confidence and the fear of losing
their jobs. One feminist scholar was interviewing irregular women
workers and told of how the interviewees were in constant fear of
being seen throughout the interview. Many social psychologists
point out that the increase of irregular work and the mental stress
that comes from it is becoming a serious social problem that is
bound to affect the whole society.

Moreover, with the automation of production lines and transfer of
factories in capital's constant search for cheaper labour, many
women workers who had originally constituted a large proportion of
the workforce in the manufacturing sector are now being absorbed
into the service sector - in areas such as the so-called
'entertainment' businesses and as domestic workers. The service
sector has rapidly expanded over the last few years in Korea, and
many women are being employed as narrator models,
telemarketers, and as servers and entertainers in bars. These jobs
are not only unstable, low waged and physically strenuous, but
they also enforce the use of 'femininity' and sexuality to raise
sales, making women more vulnerable to possibilities of sexual
abuse and exploitation. Also, because the service sector has
always shared a very thin borderline with the sex industry, it is not
very surprising that more and more women workers, both young
and aged, are being drawn into the sex industry. For example,
many married women in their 30's and 40's are employed in the so-
called 'telephone rooms (jeon-hwa-bang)' and are forced to have
phone sex with men. Many other married women were employed
as 'pager women', who are paged to come to bars to 'entertain'
men. This became a very heated issue when Daewoo Motors
unionists went to a bar, paged women, and came face to face with
familiar faces. When Daewoo workers were laid-off, the wives had
to find jobs to sustain their families and the only ones available
were as 'pager women'. The ruling elite and the conservative media
are enthusiastically deploring the moral collapse of Korean women,
but the reality is that it is the capitalist system that is corrupting
the people.

The situation is not much different on the international arena. Neo-
liberal globalisation has paved the way for increase in migrant
women workers, international trafficking and enforced sex work in
the Third World. In Korea, many women from the Philippines and
Russia come to Korea as domestic workers and 'entertainers', and
then are tricked into providing sexual services to Korean men and
the US military.

WIDENING GAP BETWEEN WOMEN
Neo-liberal globalisation has also impeded the widening of gap
between different classes of women. The living standard between
women in the developed countries and those in the Third World is
now incomparable, as is the situation inside Korea. Rich women of
the bourgeoisie can afford to wear fur coats that cost tens of million
won, shop in department stores in their imported cars, buy US
produced baby food, send their children to expensive private
English language schools so that they are reproduced as the
minority elite who rule the world of globalisation, and employ
women from South-east Asia as housemaids. This is how the
minority of women in Korea live, and furthermore, they are not living
on the wealth that they had accumulated themselves, but on the
wealth accumulated by their husbands. And this in turn is the
wealth accumulated from exploiting women workers in Korea and
elsewhere in the Third World. In contrast to the minority of women
who enjoy the outcome of neo-liberal domination in a good part of
the world, majority of women cannot find a proper job no matter
how hard they try, and when they do find a job, it is an unstable job
in slave-like conditions that can get snatched away from them.
They cannot afford domestic help or a nanny - they work for long
tiring hours outside and then come home to find piles of dishes to
be washed and children to be fed. Also, studies by women's
organizations have found that domestic abuse has increased, as
husbands and fathers who have lost jobs turn to expressing their
anger at their daughters and wives, and resort to violence.

CULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL BACKLASH
To quell mass resistance against economic globalisation that has
brought about increase in unemployment, decrement of public
services, downfall in wages and deterioration of quality of life, the
ruling elite has manipulated cultural conservatism to solidify its
dominance over society. Cultural conservatism in Korea is
represented by Confucian patriarchy. The economic crisis of 1997
saw the rise of this ideology that came together with the capitalist
form of 'male as breadwinner' model, and acted to cover up the
oppression of women while highlighting the need for women to
make more sacrifices for the sake of saving the crumbling
economy. In the meanwhile, unemployment of men was highlighted
as a serious social problem. Thus the role of women was limited to
that of 'comforting' the suffering man in the family, while the
sufferings of women both as wage workers and non-wage workers
were ignored. The Korean mainstream media and the conservative
ruling elite alike have neglected the seriousness of women suffering
from sexual abuse on the basis that women should have
perseverance, but has spotlighted those desperate women who left
home after losing all hopes as destructors of family values. Women
who had replaced their husbands as the breadwinners end up in
the sex industry, after being rejected from any other type of work,
but then are stigmatised as being morally corrupt. The severity of
unemployment of male youths appear in the news everyday,
whereas female students are not only ignored but are blocked
altogether from the labour market. Many right-wing sociologists and
economists actually suggested that marriage for women should be
more emphasized by the government so as to block women from
entering the labour market - and thus lowering the official
unemployment rate. The media focuses evermore on the fantasies
of marriage, and the 'marriage business' is now enjoying its 'Belle
Epoque'.

A CRITIQUE OF KIM DAE-JUNG'S POLICIES ON WOMEN
Kim Dae-Jung's government has been portrayed as being
democratic and pro-feminist in and outside of Korea. There were
high hopes for this president with his long history of fighting for
democracy, and from the beginning, many civil and women's
organizations decided to give him 'critical' support. However, his
promise of establishing a ministry specific on women's issues was
replaced by the Special Committee On Women's Affairs with no
legislative powers, much to the disappointment of women's groups.
As his presidential term is coming to an end, he did launch the
Ministry of Gender Equality during the first half of this year, with a
prominent figure from a major women NGO seated as the Minister.
However, the policies that the Ministry is adopting are those that
will hardly benefit majority of women suffering at grassroot levels.

This was recently manifested in the revisions that were made to the
maternity clauses in the Standard Labour Laws in June. The
Ministry had announced that it will expand public childcare so as to
decrease the burden on working women. With support from major
women NGOs [3], the Ministry proposed revisions to maternity-
related clauses in the Standard Labour Laws, and the clauses were
changed for the first time since 1953. There were basically two
major improvements - maternity leave was increased from the
present 60 days to 90 days, and prohibition on employment of
women in hazardous workplaces was expanded. This may seem
like a big step, but the fact of the matter is, these laws came in
exchange for further flexibility of women's labour. In exchange for
increase of maternal leave, the Ministry also agreed to abolish the
clauses restricting overtime work and night work, paid familycare
leave and menstruation leave.

In a situation where 70% (or perhaps even higher and ever
increasing) of women workers are irregular workers, how many
women workers will actually benefit from the revision? The majority
of working class women are outside legal boundaries. The Ministry
and women NGOs argue that they will fight for the application of
the laws to irregular workers, but without questioning the neo-liberal
characteristics behind the legislation, there is really no chance that
this will actually take place. Many women activists had fought hard
for these laws for the last decade and they are congratulating
themselves in finally achieving their objective, but in the meantime,
a vast majority of women workers have fallen into the ditches of
irregular work and the demands of the majority have been
neglected to benefit a few. Capitalists have learnt to 'sacrifice' a few
laws for the sake of obtaining further flexibility. Despite the
argument that these revisions will open new opportunities for
women, without questioning the essence of Kim's government and
its support for neo-liberalism, the revisions that were recently made
will only expedite the flexible usage of women workers and thus
further deteriorate the working conditions of irregular women
workers. The Ministry and the NGOs do not realize that the laws,
along with others that were made during the recent years [4], are
all in compliance with neo-liberalism.

It has only been one year since the Ministry of Gender Equality
took off, but those benefiting from it are middle-class, elite women,
and only the minority of women workers who are lucky enough to
be in a regular job. The presidential elections take place next year.
Despite that the Ministry is conforming to neo-liberal policies and
trying to confuse the workers about the essence of its policies, it
does have some significance amidst the severely patriarchal
political scene of Korea - which may well be undermined by any of
the major right-wing political parties that take office - including the
ruling New Millenium Democratic Party of Kim Dae-Jung, which still
receive a lot of support from NGOs. This will merely lead to more
lack of hope for state-led labour policies.

FIGHTING AND ORGANISING
Neo-liberalism was not something that hit Korea suddenly in 1997,
but is a historical development of capitalism that has gradually
taken form during the last few decades. It had been women
workers who had felt the effects of globalisation first and thus were
the first ones to resist. It was the women workers of Korea, who
fought militantly during the 70s and early 80s for a democratic
union and worker's rights. Women workers formed the foundation
for the modern labour movement, although this fact often tends to
be forgotten. During the late 80's, the Korean economy
reconstructed itself into focusing on export-oriented heavy
industries, whose workers were predominantly men, and women
workers were left behind.

The onslaught of neo-liberal globalisation and the impoverishment
that came with it was also felt first by women workers. Just after
the economic crisis, the women worker's movement moved a big
step forward when independent women's trade unions began to be
formed [5]. The unions came out of the need to address the
specific issues of women workers that could not be properly dealt
with in a general union -organising irregular workers, the
unemployed, domestic workers and those women who worked in
small companies where there are no unions. The percentage of
women participating in unions still remain at a meagre 5%, due to
the fact that general unions do not accommodate workers who are
not regular workers. It was only in 1997, when the IMF enforced
austerity measures and structural adjustment programs also
affected male workers, that the people's movement in Korea fully
realised the destructive nature of neo-liberalism. From then on,
flexibility of labour has become the main target of struggle for the
working class. Spotlight was finally thrown on the fact that neo-
liberalism attack women workers foremost, but unfortunately the
longtime demands and struggles of women workers are being put
aside, as the struggles against 'irregular labour' is again being
organised in a male-oriented fashion.

The establishments of these unions are very significant in the
history of the Korean labour movement and also in the women's
movement. Just as the strategies of capitalists change, the
organisation of the working class also much change to resist
effectively. The essence of neo-liberalism and its gender-bias
cannot be resisted through the traditional method of organization
concentrating on male, regular workers from big enterprises.

However, these newly formed women's unions still have further
developments to make and many obstacles to overcome, in their
struggles against national and international capital. The unions
must question the role of neo-liberal globalisation and its strategy
of incorporating flexibility measures into the labour market, for a full
understanding of the situation of women workers and organizing of
more radical struggles that go into the fundamental core. And at
the same time, the worker's movement of Korea must go through
structural changes to accommodate the ever increasing irregular
workers, and must also make more effort into overcoming the
patriarchal values that are still prevalent inside people's movement.
Many women activists and unionists have started to address the
issues of gender discrimination and sexual violence inside the
people's movement, which up until now had been covered up. Over
the years, many fervent and militant women activists have had to
leave the movement because of discrimination and violence. It was
always considered women's fault, or victimized women were forced
to 'forgive' for the 'greater cause'. Many women activists, workers
and unionists are uniting themselves and are calling upon the
movement to tackle the problem of hierarchy, discrimination and
violence.

TOWARDS ORGANIZING GLOBAL RESISTANCE OF WOMEN
As we have seen, neo-liberal globalisation affects all areas of
society, to attain flexibility of the labour market solely for the
interests of transnational capital. In the case of Korea, this process
of enforcing structural adjustment and flexibility has devastated the
lives of the people, especially women. Capitalist industrialisation
has brought about the rise of the women's proletariat and neo-
liberal globalisation has further feminised the proletariat while at the
same time impoverishing the proletariat into the verge of slavery.

This is not a matter of women merely being affected 'more' - we
must look at the mechanisms of neo-liberalism that operate in a
gender-biased way. Indeed, neo-liberal globalisation itself feed upon
gender discrimination and effectively use traditional patriarchal
values to exploit women further. Patriarchal ideologies act to crush
any attempts of women to politicize and form resistance.

However, the essence of neo-liberalism is slowly being manifested
and women have begun to fight back. Feminisation of labour and
feminisation of poverty signify increased exploitation of women, but
precisely because of that, provide the possibility for organization
and resistance, nationally and internationally. Women must now go
forth as subjects in uniting the people in our fight against neo-
liberal globalisation. Instead of being incorporated into a ready-
made movement of men or middle-class elite women, instead of
taking the problems of discrimination for granted, women workers,
farmers, indigenous peoples, migrants and other grassroot peoples
of the Third World must form a broad solidarity. We must analyse
globalisation from women's perspective, plan strategies that
conform with the particular needs of women, propose alternatives
that include women as equal subjects, keep to the principle of
internationalism, and unite with other oppressed groups in the
mass resistance in the fight against neo-liberalism - and go beyond
in creating a world based on equality.

* Joo-Yeon Jeong & Seung-Min Choi are with the Policy &
Information Center for International Solidarity (PICIS), Korea. This
paper was presented at the International South Group Network
(ISGN) Asian Workshop on Women and Globalisation, 22-24
November, Manila.

[1] This is merely an 'ideology', because despite the fact that the
state supports this perspective, in reality many men had lost their
jobs during the economic crisis and many women are now the sole
income providers in their families.
[2] The interesting thing is that government funded institutions
analysed the same statistics and came up with the percentage of
27-28%.
[3] This refers to Korea Women Associations United, an umbrella
organization of women NGOs. They identify themselves as being
'progressive' but after Kim Dae-Jung came into power, they
participated enthusiastically in his policies and have become more
middle-class oriented than ever.
[4] In Korea, already a whole series of revisions were made to the
Standard Labour Laws after the economic crisis, more than any
other time in Korean history. The illegitimate passage by ruling
party members of the bill allowing layoffs and the introduction of
transformational working time system in December of 1997 was
first in the series that forecasted massive neo-liberal attacks on
labour. The passage was so explicitly impudent that Korean
workers went on a massive general strike and militantly struggled
throughout the winter. Now capitalists are willing to throw a few
carrots while pushing forth their interests. Then came the maternity-
related clauses, and now another revision is about to take place
that will exchange reduction of working hours for more deterioration
of working conditions.
[5] Three unions were formed almost at the same time: Korean
Women's Trade Union, Seoul Women's Trade Union and Seoul
Regional Women's Trade Union

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