This chapter will deal primarily with imperialism and women in the Third World. After having gathered and analysed material about women's situation in our own part of the world, we revolutionary women have reached the conclusion that this analysis must have consequences for our general strategy, not just for one "sub-category" - the women's struggle. But doesn't the oppression of women exist in the Third World, too? And isn't the oppression of women woven into imperialism's economic base, and into its political and ideological dominance? Doesn't this mean that analysis of women's situation must, necessarily, have consequences for the general anti-imperialistic strategy?
I won't be attempting to present an all-encompassing analysis of this here. Doing that type of analysis, and drawing conclusions as to its political consequences, would be so encompassing that it would burst the boundaries of this book. However, I will present some aspects and will bring up a number of questions, which I hope, will be of assistance in future discussions.
In a report made for the Women's Conference in Nairobi, in 1985, regarding women's position in agriculture, the United Nation's Organization for Food and Agriculture (FAO) stated the following (as quoted in Women, a world report, 1985):
"In the Third World agricultural productivity cannot be substantially increased, nor can rural poverty be alleviated, unless women's access to key productive resources and services is substantially improved. The consequences of patriarchy for agricultural productivity are very expensive. Developing countries cannot bear their heavy cost."
In this way, FAO has placed hunger catastrophes in conjunction with the oppression of women. They point out that women in the majority of the Third World countries are important food producers, in some areas the most important. When it becomes more difficult for women to farm, this can immediately be noticed in the population's nutritional situation. Reports point to conditions such as:
When FAO speaks of "patriarchy" as the heavy burden developing countries cannot bear, the perspective, however, becomes too narrow. It is when imperialism makes use of traditional role patterns and power balances that the consequences become truly deadly.
Imperialism has forced most countries in the Third World into a "developmental model" that serves its own economic interests: production of raw materials for export to the world market that should give export incomes for use in economically developed countries. This is supplemented with "development through capital import" in the form of loans or "aid".
This "developmental model" has several advantages seen from imperialism's viewpoint: it draws developing countries into the world market's commodity economy and opens new markets for imperialist countries. Development aid policy is, among other things, deliberately used to provide the "donor country" with new markets. A pattern of developing countries exporting raw materials and importing industrial goods also opens up the possibility of exploitation through unequal exchange. Also, banks have found new investment opportunities through loans to countries in the Third World.
From the Third World countries' point of view, the situation looks different: the transition to cash crops for export has, to a large degree, been at the expense of food production for their own populations. Argentina, for example, uses more grain as cattle feed than they use to feed their own population. The grain goes to large cattle farms where it eventually ends up as hamburgers in the North American market. Simultaneously, 80% of the children in Argentinean villages are malnourished. The low raw material prices mean small export incomes to be used on economic development in the country. The recent debt crisis has strengthened this evil circle: interest rates have skyrocketed so that many Third World countries have to use the majority of their export incomes to pay interest on loans from major Western banks. This, again, forces them to attempt to get larger export incomes by converting more land to the production of cash crops.
Some see this "developmental model" as a deadly trap for countries in the Third World, a "development" that can only lead them further into powerlessness and need (see for example Samir Amin). They point out another possibility: a more or less drastic break with the world market and economic rebuilding based on their own resources with the goal of meeting their own people's needs. In other words, a strategy where subsistence is the main element.
China, during the Mao period, is an example that shows that this model is capable of lifting a poor developing country out of dire poverty. Another example might be Democratic Kampuchea, which applied a fairly drastic version of this model and succeeded in obtaining substantial economic progress within a few years. Myrdal accredits this as being the main factor that caused the raging campaign against Kampuchea in both East and West (1986, p. 253):
"But Democratic Kampuchea also broke with the imperialistic system in a considerably more fundamental manner. The world press was indignant that Democratic Kampuchea had isolated itself and closed out the world. It was a consciously chosen developmental alternative. The bulk of experience has proven that that which imperialistic ideologists - capitalism's men of free trade, social democracy's aid-workers, Moscow-dependent spokesmen for bilateral help - speak so warmly for, were, without exception, means of additionally stripping the masses of poor farmers. Not a single country in the Third World has, on imperialism's terms (western capitalistic, eastern imperialistic or for that matter terms disguised as social democracy) succeeded in doing anything other than creating deeper misery for the masses. The elite, capitalists and comprador-communists have profited, but the absolute impoverization on a world scale has merely continued. For the Third World, there is no other way to rise from poverty than breaking with this system. Isolating themselves. Closing borders. Building their strength."
Subsistence models are not without problems of their own, particularly when it comes to creating economic development beyond a certain level. Here China is also an example. Myrdal, however, is correct in his assertion that while operating on imperialism's terms, no country in the Third World has achieved anything other than deeper misery for its masses. There is no good standard answer as to how a Third World country should liberate itself and develop. But it has been proven, again and again, that it cannot be done on imperialism's terms.
What does this have to do with women and the oppression of women? The answer is that imperialism's developmental model has particularly catastrophic consequences for women. This doesn't mean that the subsistence model automatically leads to women's liberation. Here we can again look at China. But one fact remains undeniable, imperialism, in combination with male power, is simply deadly.
Ann Whitehead (1984) has studied the relationship between women and men in the Kusasi people's households in Ghana. A household often consists of many relatives with a male head of the household. Since ancient times these households have cultivated millet, which is the staple ingredient in the Kusasi people's diet. All household members help to grow the millet, but the head of the household owns and controls it. About every tenth day, he gives each of the adult members of the household a basket of millet. This is expected to last ten days until the next supplies are handed out. The wife of the head of the household also receives a basket, which is supposed to be sufficient for her and her children.
Each household member (also the leader's wife) has their own small plot of land, in addition to the household's common plots. The wife of the head of the household works the common fields where the millet is cultivated. She also works her husband's private plot, in addition to her own. It is rare that anyone other than the wife works her plot.
These private plots can be used to grow food for personal consumption or to grow products for sale. Since the husband and wife's resources aren't combined, and the wife has the responsibility for the family's survival, she probably uses her private plot to grow food for the family's consumption. The usual view among the Kusasi people, according to Whitehead, is that "women grow peanuts to feed their children in hunger-periods. Men plow the ground to get cash".
The income the man receives from selling his products is his own. He has no obligation to share with other family members. It isn't surprising that men concentrate on cultivating products for sale on their own plots and use less time growing millet on the common fields. This has led to a reduction in the millet production in this area.
Women have been left with less millet from the common fields but the same responsibility to feed their family. Whitehead concludes (p. 107):
"Men and women obviously experience any decline in subsistence crop production quite differently, in so far as men have access to much more substantial alternative forms of income, but they are not, in the last analysis, responsible for the sustenance of their children."
A developmental model that shifts agricultural production from subsistence crops to cash crops also has consequences in the individual family, consequences which are different for women than for men.
Similar mechanisms are described by Fruzetti (1984) in a study from the Blue Nile area of the Sudan. Here, too, women have the main responsibility for the family's livelihood, but this task is becoming increasingly difficult. One of the reasons is that many of the men leave the land and go to the cities seeking paid employment (p. 42):
"Thus, as providers for the household, women farmers depend on the subsistence farms, and occasionally (monthly or every few months) remittances are received as additional income from the male family members who have left the village to seek better opportunities. Additional income earned by males is not necessarily spent or invested in the family, nor does it always go towards improving the small farms. Instead, consumer goods and alcohol are purchased with the extra income, and in many cases, an additional wife is taken on and brought into the house. By contrast, women generally spend their income on social occasions, on the household, health, and schooling."
Another cause of the worsening situation for women is that planners and experts don't include women in their economic development programs. Women naturally belong in the traditional sector, while men are seen as natural participants in modern, economic activities. Fruzetti states that the result of economic growth up to now, has been a less egalitarian society. Women are forced into less profitable economic positions, and, in the name of economic development and efficient production, differences between the sexes are being strengthened. New technology in the agricultural sector is targeted toward the production of cash crops and women are discouraged from participating in this sector. Women remain in the subsistence sector where they concentrate on obtaining food for their families under more and more difficult conditions.
I have earlier referred to Vanessa Maher's study of resource distribution between men and women in the Moroccan village families. Another aspect of gender role patterns in these villages is that women are supposed to be separated from all aspects of money economy. This practice is in keeping with traditional religious beliefs. Women should, for example, not go to the market to buy or sell - it is "a disgrace in the eyes of God". What does this lead to? Maher says (1984, p. 133):
"One (conclusion, translator's note) is that, given the ideal separation of women from money, their position tends to worsen as the part of household income which consists of money increases, because of the diffusion of wage-earning and the more frequent sale of the agricultural and craft product."
It is the man who controls monetary income, his income is his income. The woman has no inevitable right to a substantial part of "his" resources. But she still has the responsibility for their children having enough food. A number of studies have similar results: women are tied to subsistence agriculture where they fight to feed their families under increasingly difficult conditions. Often the best plots of land are appropriated for the cultivation of "cash crops". Since men leave subsistence farming, preferring crop production for sale or paid labor in the cities, women's labor burden is increasing. Developmental programs and modern agricultural technology don't reach women because these programs are focused on the expanding, profitable cash-crop sector. (For more material on this see the chapter on agriculture in Women, a world report).
Traditional power balances and gender role patterns in these countries have led to the fact that it is the women who have ended up in this situation, but the imperialist "developmental model" has made everything much worse. As Fruzetti says: the result of "development" is a less egalitarian society. Imperialism has strengthened the oppression of women.
Therefore, it is of little help to speak of "making women visible in agriculture" or to work at "women targeted aid" if we don't, at the same time, question the imperialistic "developmental model" itself. Powerful economic forces will perpetually recreate women's misery if production for the world market remains the engine of "development". It does little good to point to women in the subsistence sector and say that they also need adequate land, advantageous loans, modern technology and lighter workloads. Investments go where there is money to be earned. Timberlake (1986) has illustrated this. Five Sahel countries produced record harvests of cotton in the periods of draught between 1983 and 1984. At the same time, the region as a whole, imported record amounts of grain and many lives were lost to famine. Why did the draught hit the edible crops, and not the crops that were to be exported to the world market? The answer is simple. Crops that provide the government with foreign currency are supported with improved seed, cheaper fertilizers, transportation for the harvest, and guaranteed prices. Food for the poor, hungry farmers, however, produces no export income. As long as the imperialistic "developmental model" remains predominant, women will be sentenced to poverty and need.
The developments I have sketched here, where we find women functioning as subsistence farmers, seem to be most pronounced in Africa (see for example Timberlake, 1986, and Agnete Strøm, 1986). But the tendency can also be found on other continents, such as Latin America and Asia.
Today, the subsistence sector, and women with it, is under hard attack from the imperialistic "developmental model". But the subsistence sector also has economic importance for imperialism. These types of contradictions often turn up within capitalism as an economic system. The capitalists try, for example, to force workers' wages down, though this simultaneously means that the market for consumption goods shrinks.
I have referred earlier to Bennholdt-Thomsen, who states that the subsistence sector contributes to lowering capitalism's reproduction costs because workers partially support themselves with products from their subsistence farms. Therefore, the capitalist can pay lower wages than he otherwise would have paid. Bennholdt-Thomsen feels that the subsistence sector enables Capital to maintain a reserve army of labor without paying for it.
Bennholdt-Thomsen is not the only one who claims that the sectors outside of capitalist commodity production are of economic importance to Capital. Samir Amin describes imperialism as a formation of society where Capital dominates over all non-capitalistic moles of production (1980, p. 228):
"To analyze the imperialist system is to analyze a system of social formation, and not the capitalist mode extended to the world. In this system, all non-capitalist modes are subjected to the domination of capital, and surplus labor is thus wrenched from non-proletarianized producers, to be transformed into profit for capital."
One such mode of non-capitalistic production which plays a subordinate role to capitalism's dominance is production in subsistence agriculture. Amin also describes industry in the Third World as "parasitic" in relation to agriculture (p. 145):
"Third world industry continues to be parasitic in the sense that it gets its accumulation by levies from the rural world in real terms (fiscal levies, internal terms of exchange unfavorable to the peasants, etc.) without in turn supporting agricultural development."
Capital in the Third World, which is for the most part dominated by the imperialistic countries, receives a steady flow of new labor power, which is produced in another economic sector without cost for Capital. This labor force often has no "support burden", because women and children are left in the villages to manage for themselves as best they can. It is an old social pattern: women, having the main responsibility for family, make it possible. It is a pattern that was created under entirely different economic conditions. Now, it places women and children's lives in danger, but increases Capital's profit, since Capital doesn't need to pay "support wages" to their male laborers. Often wages can be pressed even lower by Capital paying just a portion of what the worker needs for survival, while the rest is provided by relatives in the subsistence sector. As Celia Mather points out in her study of industry in West Java: workers wages are just a supplement, not the main source of income.
Scott (1984) refers to the work of Barbara Stuckey and Margaret Fay that describes how this system evolved during colonialism. Taxing and the expropriation of land were used to create a "surplus labor force" which could be used in the European-owned plantations and mines. Workers received just enough cash to stay alive while they were working. This system gave employers a perpetual stream of labor without making them economically or politically responsible for the long-term survival of their labor force. Working for wages, whether it be in the mines, on the plantations, in building, construction work, or in transportation gave no security in the event of illness, injury, unemployment, ageing, or for worker's families. All these "social services" were the responsibility of the subsistence farms in the African and Asian villages. The employer was exempted from bearing the full expenses of his labor force to a much larger degree than in Europe in the 19th and 20th century.
The increasing dominance of women in the subsistence sector is a new occurrence. The "social services" Stuckey and Fay describe, are now being created through women's work. Scott sums it up in this way (p. 69):
"They (women) have thus become the mainstay of the welfare system that helps make Third World wage workers such a bargain for multinationals. The rural subsistence sector not only supports the worker's children and family members too old or ill to work; it takes care of the worker himself in unemployment or ill health."
When Amin talks about Capital pulling surplus labor from non-proletarianized producers and calls industry in the Third World a "parasite" on agriculture, it is, for the most part women, who have been victims of this exploitation. In today's imperialistic system, imperialism's gross exploitation of producers within the non-capitalistic modes of production is predominantly an exploitation of women as a sex. Since conditions for subsistence agriculture are becoming more and more difficult, while at the same time the exploitation continues, this is creating dreadful consequences for women's standard of living. As Amin points out: Capital's dominance also influences reproduction conditions (and thereby living standards) for labor power in the non-capitalistic sectors. And, he continues (p. 228): "there are no pledges to secure the requirements of reproduction." In other words: there is nothing that suggests that Capital will ensure that the rural population will survive. As we know, it isn't unusual that they don't.
In many of the Third World countries we find enormously large cities - cities which expand and expand without control or planning. The most well-known example is perhaps Mexico City. These cities are artificially swollen in the sense that it is not economic importance that makes them large. They swell because they are perpetually fed by the poorest of the villagers who have given up the battle for existence in their earlier homelands. Instead they seek "their fortune" in the city, but "fortune" is often a tin-roofed shack and unemployment. Economically, these giant cities can almost be seen as cancerous tumors.
So why do the poor come to the cities and meet unemployment instead of happiness? Many try to support themselves in the so-called "informal sector" of the economy. Those who work in the informal sector are, in some ways, "self-employed business people". At the same time, they are completely outside any type of regulation of labor and economy. They might sell goods that they have made themselves on the streets or carry out different types of services. On a car trip through Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, in the fall of 1986, I saw several examples. When we parked the car to visit a market, a little boy appeared who offered to keep watch over our car if we paid him. Later, we stopped for a red light. A woman used this opportunity to sell us nuts through the car window.
"Informal" economic activity of this kind is, of course, also found in our part of the world. What is special about these big cities in the Third World is that the informal sector is so large. In a report about women and trade made for the United Nation's Women's Conference in Nairobi in 1985, it was estimated that between 20 and 70 percent of the labor force in the Third World's cities supported themselves in the informal sector (quoted in Women, a world report, p. 40). The same report and other studies, show that women make up a large portion of those who work in the informal sector. There are many reasons for this. Women often have less of a chance getting work in the "formal sector" than men because of poor, or for that matter no education, and other conditions. Women have children for whom they are responsible, and what are they to do with these children while they work? In the "informal sector" they can bring them along. They can "choose" their own working hours. Some of the conditions in our part of the world that turn women into low paid, part-time workers with inconvenient working hours, also turn women in the Third World into "self-employed business people" in the informal sector.
What do these women do? A lot of different things. Scott (p. 71) quotes Ela Bhatt, who organized "The Self-Employed Working Women's Union" in Ahmedabad, India. She tells us that women are in the majority in the informal sector, a sector which contains 45% of the city's labor force. A survey of the members of the union shows that 97% live in the slums, 93% are illiterate, 91% are married, and 70% bring their children along when they work. Some occasionally manage to get work as manual laborers. They carry goods on their heads, or they pull a cart. Others work at home. They make incense, or cigarettes, produce cheap clothing or wool blankets etc. on rented sewing machines with scrap textiles as material. A third group sells fruit, vegetables and eggs. There are no labor laws that protect these women and they are dependent on their loan shark's goodwill to keep their "business" going.
The fact that these women belong to the poorest sector of the Third World's large cities is hardly necessary to mention. According to a report which was also presented at the Women's Conference in Nairobi (quoted in Women, a world report, p. 40), studies from both Jakarta, Lagos and from the poorest city areas in Bolivia and Peru, show that those who work in the informal sector earn approximately half of what the lowest-paid workers in the "formal" sector earn.
A bottomless sea of misery. But maybe there are also bright sides, for Capital? First, the enormous unemployment helps to keep wages in the "formal" sector down. Secondly, the informal sector offers commodities and services at prices that are far lower than those we see in the "normal" market. A worker who can, buy cheap, homemade products such as cigarettes, clothes, and food on the street, can manage on less pay than if he had to buy everything in stores. Stuckey and Fay (quoted in Scott, p. 71) go as far as to say that the "informal sectors" is the modern version of the subsistence sector:
"The past, necessary reliance of Third World wage-earners on their family members working in the traditional rural subsistence sector, without whose labour the low-paid wage-worker could not have survived, is being re-established inside the cities. What is called the growth of the informal sector is in fact the movement - the re-location, the migration - of the rural subsistence sector into the towns."
Women's work in the subsistence sector in the village is grossly exploited by imperialism. So she moves to the city, but the exploitation moves with her.
According to one of the reports for the women's conference in Nairobi (quoted in Women, a world report, p. 39), free-trade zones in the Third World are the employment sector that shows the most rapid growth in the entire world. The vast majority of the workers here are young women.
What kind of industry is it that moves from the rich part of the world to the poor? Why does it move, and why does it prefer female laborers? Elson and Pearson (1984) point out the following conditions:
All this contributes to making a particularly harsh exploitation of the female labor force possible. Imperialism knows how to use "the feminine" to its advantage, also in world market factories.
This is, of course, not the entire story of imperialism's exploitation and oppression of women. As in the rich part of the world, the oppression of women in the Third World is taking on innumerable forms. A particularly grotesque form is the way that some of the Southeastern Asian countries have developed into pimp states. An important source of currency income is tourism. The main attraction for tourists is the abundant availability of young prostitutes who glow in their oriental sweetness and mystery. When the International Monetary Fund pressures governments to implement an economic policy that both makes the majority of its population poorer and secures larger currency incomes to repay interest on loans, the International Monetary Fund becomes, in practice, a type of head procurer. Agnete Strøm describes the effects of prostitution in this area in this way (1986, p. 62):
"96% of the prostitutes in Bangkok come from the poorest provinces in the country. Of Thailand's 700,000 prostitutes 200,000 are used in sex-tourism. The government does little or nothing to stop this development. On the contrary, it makes itself dependent on the currency incomes and expands for increased sex-tourism.
The sex-industry is imperialism's legitimate offspring. It has existed for 20 to 30 years, but it is only now that we have opened our eyes to what it truly is. Thousands of villages base their economic existence on young girls prostituting themselves in the big cities and sending money home.
When the daughter's prostitution is her parent's/ family's economic foundation and authorities see it as of national economic importance, then imperialism has come a long way in stealing the ground out from under women. What kind of new society can they build if they don't fight the view on women that has developed?"
The material I have presented in this chapter should be sufficient to show that imperialism does not function gender neutrally. Therefore, the battle against imperialism cannot be gender neutral. Women aren't in the same objective situation as men. This also holds true for the Third World. Therefore, they don't play the same role as men in class struggle, and in the battle against imperialism.
It is, for example, important to know that it is women who are hardest hit by the imperialistic "developmental model" and the attacks on the subsistence sector. Perhaps it is women who will have to be the main force in the event of an African peasant revolution? Perhaps this would be a revolution, such as Amin and Myrdal describe, which would set its sights at breaking with the world market and making subsistence the main element in its strategy? For men there are often other ways out, however wretched they may be. For women it is becoming increasingly impossible to "live in the old way". This means, in any case, that a liberation strategy in many of the Third World countries will have to have a clear women's perspective if it is to succeed.
One thing is certain, insurrection among women in the Third World would be a deadly threat to imperialism. A revolt of this kind can attack much of the foundation on which imperialism builds its extra exploitation of the masses in the Third World. Aid work, itself more or less well-intentioned, has often been based upon the notion that "women have been trailing behind development". This is totally wrong. I heartily agree with Elson and Pearson when they say (p. 19):
"We do not accept that the problem is one of women being left out of the development process. Rather, it is precisely the relations through which women are "integrated" into the development process which need to be problematised and investigated. For such relations may well be part of the problem, rather than part of the solution."
The way that women are integrated in the imperialistic development is obviously "a part of the problem" for women and "a part of the solution" for imperialism. If women organize to fight against this "integration", they will make up a powerful anti-imperialistic force (many places in the Third World this organizing has begun, on different levels, and on different foundations). As in our part of the world, their battle will demand more radical solutions than men's battle. Those who do not realize this, and take the consequences of it, will have problems being truly revolutionary anti-imperialists in practice.