Midterm 2 new shit

Question 1

What are the effects of currency devaluation on women?

Answer 1

increases employment opportunities.
increasing the burden of unpaid work by women

Question 2

What are the effects of emphasize on exportable on women?

Answer 2

increases employment opportunities.
lead to women seeking paid employment

Question 3

What are the effects of cuts in government spending on women?

Answer 3

burden of unpaid work increases
decrease in jobs

Question 4

What are the effects of privatization on women?

Answer 4

Privatization may lead to prices increases (of commodities previously subsidized by the
government or produced by government enterprises). May limit access to health and
education services. This is likely to increase unpaid work.

Question 5

What is outsourcing and what is its goal?

Answer 5

Outsourcing (offshoring) is shifting tasks, operations, jobs or processes to an external
contracted third party for a significant period of time.
Production is divided, and value added is through production across different locations.
Goal: to reduce cost
Access to larger markets

Question 6

What is the reason behind the growth of the garment sector in Bangladesh?

Answer 6

low wages and high gender wage gap.

Question 7

What rationale institutional economists gave for the imposition of labor standards?

Answer 7

Institutionalist economists: impose labor standards (social clause of ILO): include
prohibition of child labor, forced labor, and discrimination, union rights

Economic rationale: increasing compliance with labor standards- improved labor
productivity, greater political stability.

Question 8

What are the mainstream challenges to labor standards?

Answer 8

labor market regulation will lead to job losses
raising wages will lead to a slowdown of employment growth
Tapping into country’s comparative advantage. This would mean with few labor
regulations to capitalize on low-wage labor and fuel long term growth.

Question 9

Suppose you are told that the garment export workers in local factories earn more than
“other wageworkers”, who are not in EPZs. What are the caveats?

Answer 9

higher earnings of garment workers relative to other wage workers is due to extremely
long hours of garment workers
significant gender wage gap: 48-85%, and women’s wages are more likely to fall below
minimum wage
long hours are not a choice, but due to necessities
Delayed payment of monthly earnings

Question 10

It is argued that garment jobs pay better than poverty level income which can provide a
path out of poverty. What is the problem with this argument?

Answer 10

Studies indicate that wages paid were 14% lower than living wages.

Question 11

Is offshoring bad for the US? What is the impact on employment?

Answer 11

Fears of job losses tend to overplay the likely impact of offshoring. 70% of the economy
is composed of the type of services that can’t be offshored.

Question 12

How is feminization defined?

Answer 12

Transformation of jobs to become associated with jobs that are typically held by women
(precarious work conditions: presence of insecure contracts with few benefits, long hours,
undermined organizing for worker rights.)
Men could find themselves in feminized positions.

b) Increased share of women in the labor force (this could happen when women’s
employment is rising more rapidly, or men’s employment is falling).

Question 13

What is labor market flexibility?

Answer 13

A flexible labor market is one where firms are under fewer regulations regarding the
labor force and can therefore set wages, fire employees at will and change their work
hours.

Question 14

What are the reasons for the reversal of feminization in Taiwan?

Answer 14

Moved towards capital intensive manufacturing exports from labor intensive exports
since the 1970s. From 1981 to 1993 exports grew at an average annual rate of 12.3%
Smaller firms that were losing international competitiveness increased overseas
investment since mid-1980s relocating labor-intensive industrial production out of
Taiwan.

Question 15

Why do we observe a U shape curve of labor market participation of women?

Answer 15

Men’s privileged access to new technologies and education leads then to have higher
productivity leading to a decline in women’s share in the labor force.
In agricultural sectors growing productivity differences lead women to withdraw from the
labor force
In urban areas, employers would prefer men with higher productivities, and it would be
more difficult for women to combine productive and reproductive activities in urban
areas.
With further industrialization, more education of women, falling fertility rates would lead
to an increase in women’s labor force participation, increasing share of women in the
labor force.

Question 16

What are EPZs

Answer 16

EPZs, established as a structure to attract foreign capital to produce for export,
EPZs operate in subcontracting networks

Question 17

What is a discourse and what function it serves in the jewelry industry in India?

Answer 17

• Discourse is defined as a domain of language used that is unified by common
  assumption.
• Discourses include social practices and forms of subjectivity and power relations.
• The discourses feed into the discursive practices and are also shaped by them.
• How discourse shapes women’s exclusion from jewelry production

Question 18

What are the theoretical links between international trade and feminization?

Answer 18

Neoclassical explanation- comparative advantage (Hecksher-Ohlin model). Less skill
workers are abundant, and women are less skilled.
Heterodox explanation-absolute advantage: firms compete for export market share on the
basis of unit costs and prefer women because of their wages being low.

Question 19

We know that women are preferred for labor-intensive work but also that they lose out
when production becomes more capital intensive. Why is this surprising?

Answer 19

women have rapidly closed the education gap at the primary, secondary, and tertiary
levels.

Question 20

Defeminization may take place for reasons related to the causes that led to preference for
women’s labor in the first place. what are these reasons?

Answer 20

• First, as labor costs make up a smaller proportion of total cost in capital-intensive
  production, the incentive to hire relatively cheaper women’s labor might disappear
• Second, gender norms designate heavy or technologically sophisticated work as
  “masculine” and thus preclude hiring women for such work
• third, women lack access to on the job training that allows them to build new skills
• fourth, as women begin to organize for better pay and working conditions, they become a
  less attractive workforce for employers

Question 21

National Income Identity

Answer 21

Y = C+I+G+X-M
(Y-C-G)-I = CA
Y is national income
C is consumption
I is investment
G is government spending
X is exports
M is imports
CA is current account.

Question 22

Current Account Balance

Answer 22

SAVINGS
SP=Y-T-C
SG=T-G
S=SP+SG=Y-C-G
Thus:
S-I=CA
Where SP is private savings,
T is taxes, SG is
government saving, S is
total savings.

Question 23

What is the effect of integration on feminization?

Answer 23

With global economic integration
feminization
* But not universal nor irreversible.

Question 24

What are the gender implications of labor market flexibility?

Answer 24

1) Decline in benefits,
income insecurity and
women’s employment

2) Union strength and
women’s employment

3) Minimum wage and
women’s employment

4) Export led
industrialization and
women’s employment.

Cost cutting
competitiveness
Subcontracting

5) a) Decline in the
proportion of jobs
requiring craft skills
learned through
prolonged on-the-job
learning.

5) b) Skill polarization.
* For majority minor skills, capacities such as
“docility”
* High labor turnover.
* Women have a higher labor turnover.
* Reason for discrimination would be removed.

Question 25

Export oriented industrialization has two key dimensions:

Answer 25

EPZs to attract foreign capital * Subcontracting networks that MNCs (multinational corporations) have spawned around them.

Question 26

How can global defeminization from industrial upgrading be explained?

Answer 26

1) labor costs make up a smaller proportion of total cost in capital- intensive production 2) gender norms designate heavy or technologically sophisticated work as “masculine” 3) women lack access to on-the-job training 4) as women begin to organize for better pay and working conditions, they become a less attractive workforce for employers

Question 27

Factors affecting outsourcing:

Answer 27

1) New technologies 2) Accelerated mobility of capital and trade liberalization

Question 28

What can be best for women?

Answer 28

* Institutionalist economists: impose labor standards (social clause of ILO): include prohibition of child labor, forced labor, and discrimination, union rights * Economic rationale * Some feminists boosted these arguments.

Question 29

The debate on international labor standards

Answer 29

* Mainstream economists * 1) labor market regulation will lead to job losses * 2) raising wages will lead to a slowdown of employment growth * 3) tapping into comparative advantage * Some feminists also assumed the mainstream trade-off between quantity and quality of jobs- women would lose jobs

Question 30

Feminist defense of export jobs and as good-jobs and its criticisms

Answer 30

1) earnings of garment workers in EPZs compared with those in alternative jobs are far superior the other earning in the local economy

Question 31

Why is migration a feminist issue? Make two points.

Answer 31

 Almost half of migrants are women and girls. And women are increasingly migrating alone or as heads of their households.  Migrating women face the risk of being the victims of sex trafficking.  Women who migrate face double discrimination, as a woman and a migrant.  Pregnant women migrants may lose access to sexual and reproductive health care while travelling.  In destination countries they continue to face barriers to health care, especially sexual and reproductive health services.

Question 32

It has been suggested that human trafficking can be viewed as a form of migration. The migration literature posits a hypothesis about the relationship between the income level of the source country and the incidence of human trafficking from that country. What is this relationship, why?

Answer 32

People in the poorest countries cannot afford to migrate, People in the richest countries don’t have incentives to migrate People from middle income countries are more likely to migrate. This suggests that at cross country level there is an inverse U shape between income per capita and migration.

Question 33

What is the hypothesized relationship between poverty and trafficking?

Answer 33

It is argued that the poorest families are most likely to sell their children to traffickers, or poor men and women migrate illegally, and risk being trafficked.

Question 34

One of the elements of the feminization of poverty thesis is that it misses the major points about gendered poverty, that is about feminization of responsibility and obligation. Answer the following questions. In this context “Increasing disarticulation between investments/ responsibilities and rewards” is an element that is mentioned. Explain what the element in quotation means.

Answer 34

While responsibilities for dealing with poverty are becoming progressively feminized there seems to be no corresponding increase in women’s rights and rewards. Men, despite their lesser inputs, are managing to retain their traditional privileges and prerogatives such as control over income, license for social freedom and power over household decision-making

Question 35

In measuring women’s monetary poverty there has been an over-emphasis on female headed households. It was assumed that women headed households were the poorest of the poor: burden of employment, housework, and childcare. It is argued that this is misguided. Why is it considered misguided? Make 3 points.

Answer 35

 Women in male headed households suffer poverty too.  Women’s poverty can be associated with what goes on within the household. It is then possible that “going at it alone” can place women in a better position to challenge the diverse factors that make them poor.  Women may choose to be heads of households.  Female-headed household may have more earners and higher per capita income in comparison to male headed households.  There is a diversity of female-headed households in terms of household composition, financial contribution from kinship networks and absent fathers.

Question 36

Measuring poverty through headcount ratios fails to capture the intensity of poverty. Why is this?

Answer 36

Individuals with consumption levels marginally below the poverty line are counted as being poor just as individuals with consumption levels much further below the poverty line.

Question 37

You are given the following results on the impact of paid work on whether a woman ever faced a sexual violence or not. The coefficient estimate of having paid work is 0.076 and its standard error is (0.035). Which hypothesis does this result support and why?

Answer 37

It supports the male backlash view. Because the coefficient is positive. And it is estimated statistically significantly because the absolute value of the coefficient estimate divided by the standard error is greater than zero.

Question 38

Feminist economists have criticized neoclassical economics assumptions. One of those assumptions is rationality. Define rationality. State on what grounds feminist have criticized that assumption.

Answer 38

Rationality is defined narrowly as the ability to order given preferences (that we are born with). A broader conceptualization would be based on reasonableness (Adam Smith). It would incorporate the role of emotions (Keynes- animal spirits) Experimental economics demonstrate that humans often do not behave rationally.

Question 39

In the documentary chain of love what is the main theme

Answer 39

The migrant domestic worker becomes a surrogate mother for the children of the family she is serving; the substitute for the love and attention the parent is unable, or unwilling, to give. Not necessarily becoming a part of the family, the domestic worker is encouraged to leave her own children back in the Philippines in the care of her own domestic worker. A continuous economic cycle begins, where a domestic worker labors throughout her young, childbearing years until she becomes too old to care for her charges, returns to her home country, the cycle repeating itself all over again as her daughter travels overseas to become the next generation of domestic worker.

Question 40

In the documentary is it beneficial for the worker and the country?

Answer 40

It is beneficial for the Philippines because migrant women are the biggest source of foreign exchange, which is much needed there. They are a cheap source of labor for the destination countries. So, the destination country benefits as well.

Question 41

An aspect of the structural adjustment policies is emphasis on the production of exportable goods. a) (4 points) How does this policy work and how does it effect the economy?

Answer 41

Direct subsidies or tax incentives are provided for exportable good producers. Exportable goods sector expands Quotas and tariffs are eliminated for importable goods, making importable sector less profitable. It is likely to shrink.

Question 42

Both the neoclassical Heckscher–Ohlin trade theory and the heterodox approaches provide explanations for increased feminization of the labor force with increased international trade. The feminist literature has noted an additional aspect that characterized the feminization of labor: it took place almost entirely in labor-intensive industries such as textiles, garments, and electronics and not generally in manufacturing. Why was this?

Answer 42

In addition to being relatively cheap to employ, women were believed to possess gender specific skills and “attributes” such as dexterity, docility, submissiveness, and reluctance to join unions, which made them suitable for certain labor- intensive activities. In other words, gender-typing these jobs as “feminine” (in contrast to more heavy “masculine” work) facilitated the segmentation of women into low-paying and low-value-added jobs in manufacturing.  In addition to gender typing, sex segmentation in manufacturing has been linked to norms that assign men with breadwinner status and ration higher-paying jobs to them, to barriers to entry as a result of male-dominated unions or government policy, and to pre-market discrimination in education and training.