Globalization and the Commodification of the Female Form

Lecture/Discussion at the Goldman School

Transcript of whatever I said

“Factory owners want to hire women because they are docile and submissive. This is how they have become the largest pool of cheap labor in the world.”

These lines are spoken by an observer in China in the controversial documentary China Blue, which documents the lives of a few female workers in a denim-based sweatshop. We screened China Blue in a class today on Chinese political economy and here is some of what we learned. Today China is witnessing the largest human migration in history. 130 million peasants are moving to urban areas – most of them are women. Working long hours which stretch up to 20 hours a day, being paid on a piecemeal wage rate and having to pay for their dorms and hot water to wash with, these Chinese women start work at a very early age and earn 6 cents an hour all of which goes into subsidizing the family, the cost of a brother's education, their marriages and day to day spending in their rural family. They deal with the disappointment of their parents on being given a girl child and stretch themselves to their natural physical limits to earn money. Their work, their bodies, their lives have been commodified and chained to the shop floor where they work as thread cutters, zip-stitchers, seamstresses and other forms of manufacturing which require delicate hands and nimble fingers.

Good evening. I am Vasundhara Sirnate and I hope you watched the documentaries this evening with as much rapt attention as I have.

Recently, I encountered a very interesting cab driver. In our fifteen-minute drive together he asked me where I was from, why I had a strange accent and then had a business proposition. Why, he said, don’t we have more Indian women coming over to the US and becoming wives? Why, I asked him, would people want an Indian wife? He said, well they don’t argue and nag and they are very gentle and well.. nice.

In many ways the cabdriver echoed the same view that the observer in China Blue had.

I must confess I was not exactly gobsmacked upon hearing what the cab driver said about Indian women. There are many popular stereotypes of women from South Asia, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea, China and Russia which tend to construct these women as exotic and beautiful for sure, but also submissive in personal and economic relations. But what did strike me was his business model. He clearly saw this as a way of making money. And the product being sold was the Indian woman. But what skills/services did this woman provide – housework, sexual services, subsidizing a man’s lifestyle and enabling him to be a productive person in the economic set up. At a psychological level this woman would apparently not challenge the man, destabilize the relationship or interrogate the structure of patriarchy.

Today’s discussion is going to be focused more on the South Asian context and more specifically the Indian context. By starting out with China Blue I did however, want to place women’s commodification in a slightly more comparative perspective.

The cab driver’s monologue coupled with the observation of the speaker in China Blue has made me think a little harder about the economic worth of a woman’s body, a woman’s work – in short, its commodification. My previous work has concentrated on the visible impact of religious fundamentalism on the roles women played in the home and outside. I tried to understand why gender never emerged as a significant political identity as opposed to race, ethnicity and religion in India. What the cab driver said made me rethink most of the theory I had read about gender. I began situating theories of gender produced in the West in more local and regional contexts and found many theories lacking. For instance, the very idea of patriarchy has never been adequately disaggregated. In India moving from one region to another women slip in and slide out of different structures of patriarchy. In many regions women themselves are carriers and perpetuators of patriarchal values, best evinced in the saas-bahu or mother-in-law/daughter-in-law dialectic.

When I shared the cab driver’s proposition with my American colleague here at Berkeley, she was somewhat incensed. She felt the cab-driver had insulted American women by assuming that because women in America were more career oriented, they did not believe in the structure of the family or values linked to the family. The range of reactions which the cab-driver's proposition evoked from people actually helped me think about commodification, what its scope is and how it is applied in a variety of contexts to mean a variety of things.

Before I proceed with a discussion of the two documentaries on India, I want to disaggregate the very notion of commodification and in doing so enhance our own understanding of the term. Commodification occurs when something, which previously did not have an economic value, gets assigned some such value. Recently, many services industries have arisen centered around the female body – mail-order brides, surrogate motherhood and of course prostitution, strip clubs etc. Women’s work, however, is a classic example of a phenomenon that is curiously absent from National Income Accounting. There are various arguments for and against commodification, which I am sure you have been exposed to in the earlier parts of this series, so I will skip that for the moment. Also, I wish to flag that in the South Asian context both men and women have been commodified in varying degrees. However, since we are really talking about women here, I will restrict myself to women’s commodification.

I propose to think of commodification in terms of the following sub-types.

1. Legal versus illegal commodification: Legalized prostitution which function as recognized industries and are governed by rules enforced by the state would come under legal commodification. This is different from illegal commodification where women are often trafficked and sold across international borders and forced into prostitution or pornography. In the absence of rules and their enforcement the economic and human rights of such women and children cannot be secured.

2. Public versus private commodification: Public commodification involves placing an economic value on women’s bodies in the public sphere. For instance, commodification through advertising or glamour magazines, beauty contests, strip clubs, etc. On the other hand, private commodification takes place within the confines of the family. For instance, there is more value attached in South Asia to a woman who bears a son. The indirect logic being that a son will be an economic agent in the future.

In the Indian state of Haryana the rise of the cult of Paro has become another example of private commodification. A cultural preference for sons over daughters has led to an adverse sex ratio in many Indian states. In Haryana the ratio is 861 females per thousand males, well below the national average of 927 females per thousand males. Paros are women who are sold into marriage for about 200-300 dollars to men in women-deficient states like Haryana. Mostly, these women are tribal or tend to be from lower caste families. A recent estimate which found its ways into a BBC news report, stated that about 45000 women from the Eastern state of Jharkhand had found their way as bought-brides in Haryana. Sadly, the emergence of this ‘bride-price’ has come about in India because of the scarcity of women and not because people hold them in high regard. Paro’s are required to work on farms in rural areas, produce more labor for the household run farm and take care of the extended family. In many cases, poorer families who cannot afford to buy more than one ‘Paro’ often marry the girl off to two or three brothers, each of whom exercises his conjugal rights over her.

3. Commodification during war or in peacetime: Commodification during wartime is often a response to exacerbated economic conditions. It can also be forced like in the case of the comfort women used by the Japanese army during the Second World War. Commodification during war is inherently problematic. Why is that? First, war situations are imbued with much uncertainty about economic and political outcomes. Second, there is a huge psychological dimension to war as well. One in which sexual domination over the women of one community or country is a sign of victory or assertion of one paradigm over another. Similarly, in situations of ethnic conflict and communal strife women’s bodies often become the site of violence or the battleground on which the battle between the two communities is fought. It is not surprising therefore that the woman-object and the manner of her dress, her role in society and family is often constructed and reconstructed by different fundamentalisms and nationalisms.

4. Voluntary versus involuntary commodification: There is a strong involuntary aspect to commodifictaion of women. This however, is a very thorny issue. On the one hand, many women supposedly enter fields of commodification ‘voluntarily’. For instance the increase in levels of prostitution in the Post-Soviet world has led many people to recognize the importance of ‘choice’, ie, women enter the trade knowingly. Other women enter the trade ‘involuntarily’, i.e, they are forced into prostitution, trafficked across international borders etc. However, in the Russian case for instance, sex work is emerging as a recognized economic activity, but this may have less to do with ‘choice’ and more to do with the structure of the economy, where it is harder for lesser skilled women to find jobs. Given that there may also operate a strong male-preference in job allocations, even skilled women may find themselevs out of the job-market. So my question really is, if what you’re doing is in some way conditioned by structure, does it remain a choice at all? Many left leaning feminists also adopt this stance. But I reiterate this is a very very hard thing to measure.

We can locate the two documentaries we saw somewhere within this schematic. I will however, advance a more critical perspective on the documentaries rather than recapitulate what the documentaries are saying.

I wish to advance the dialectic between public and private commodification of women. Both the documentaries which we have seen deal with a separate aspect of my two pronged classification. The documentary about Punjabi brides talks about the aspirations of these women. They want to be independent, they want to be economic agents and basically escape what some of them perceive to be an oppressive, patriarchal structure. However, they find themselves stranded between two patriarchies – the Punjabi one and the Western one. Those who cross over have often just crossed over to a different system of patriarchy. The interesting thing is that often moving out of one patriarchal structure is termed liberation, but in fact women are simply moving to another perhaps less evident system of domination. These systems of domination occur and are reproduced within the realm of the diasporic family. A classic case study conducted by Sunita Puri found that there was a history of sex selection amongst South Asian families in the Bay Area. Also, women who came over here from South Asia and then had girl children were often abused by their in-laws and husbands. This somehow begs the question of how these women were viewed – as incubators, which would produce a male heir? While this is a harder question to answer, what is in fact increasingly common is the crossing over of South Asian women to work as wives (and notice I say work as wives, not ‘be’ wives) for service professionals here or even as wives for illegal immigrants. The dynamics of the two groups of women are substantially different. The women who come here on an H-4 visa are better off than their illegally brought in or those who are wives of blue collar workers. In the H-4 case, the husband has a respectable income and the women are mostly upper caste Hindus, who are educated and in worst case scenarios are able to access the state for immediate redressal. This is not common though. Mostly, women rely on their informal social and same-caste networks to address any family problems. This informal, social, same-caste network basically replaces the extended family in say the Indian setting for instance.

In the illegal immigrant/blue-collar workers case, it is my instinct that the women are worse off. A friend of mine who works with abused women at the Red Cross here once mentioned to me that not only do these women have a problem with speaking in English, they are also thoroughly dependent on their husbands and less skilled than their upper-caste contemporaries and often through counseling my friend unfortunately finds she has to send them back into the same abusive structure, because returning to India is not an option. She finds the case to be similar for many Mexican women who have crossed over illegally. In this case, such women cannot even access the state’s legal apparatus for redressal because they run the risk of being caught and deported along with their husbands.

The documentary on Punjabi brides does not explore these aspects, which is why I chose to raise them here.

But here’s the real question before us? Hasn’t commodification always been there? Arguably, yes! SO what is so new about it? I think that with the rise of new technology for the dissemination of information commodification has infact increased and is taking place on a scale never before seen. Processes of economic internationalization, defined as an exogenous easing of international trade, have led to the rise of new economies, sectors and industries. This has been coupled with a rapid increase in communication technology and shifts in processes of production and forming links with the international economy. All of this has affected social relations at local levels and has changed gender dynamics and given rise to what is called in India 'competing masculinities' which have caste and religious dimensions. I would be happy to go into some cases to establish this during the question and answer session.

But is commodification really taking place on a globalized scale? I wish to introduce you to some statistics collected by the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women to establish the global proportions of a certain kind of commodification, i.e., commodification in the sex trade.

(Reads from a report)

“Global trafficking is a $7 Billion industry (UNICRI) ? According to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, human trafficking generates an estimated $9.5 billion in annual revenue. In Thailand, trafficking is a 500 billion Baht annual business (equivalent to approximately 124 million U.S. dollars), which represents a value equal to around 60 per cent of the government budget (CATW). ? In Korea, sex industry profits reached 24.0712 trillion won, which is equivalent to 4.4% of 578.8 trillion national GDP and was the same as the profits from agriculture and fishery industry. ? Pornography/Cybersex industry generates approximately $ 1B annually and is expected to grow to 55-7B over the next 5 years”

Let me assault you with some more statistics.

“Each week 60,000 Victorian men spend $7M on prostitution, with the legalized industry turning over more than $360M a year and drawing on some 4500 prostituted women and girls (Jeffreys) Italy: 1 of 6 (or almost 17%) Italian men uses women in prostitution. Differently stated, this means that in Italy, 9 million men use an estimated 50,000 women in prostitution (International Conference, 2004). Germany: 18% of German men regularly pay for sex Adolf Gallwitz,” 2003). One million prostitute-users buy women daily in Germany for sexual activities (Herz, 2003). UK: 10% of London’s male population buys women for the sex of prostitution (Brown, 2000) USA: Estimated one half of the adult male population are frequent prostitute-users, and that 69% of the same population had purchased women for sexual activities at least once (Brown, 2000). o Thailand : 5.1 million sexual tourists a year, 450,000 local customers buy sex every day (Barry). 75% of Thai men were prostitution buyers, almost 50% had their first sexual intercourse with women in prostitution (Brown, 2000) Vietnam: 70% of those caught in brothels are reported to be state officials, 60% to 70% of men in Cambodia have purchased women for sexual activities”

And these are just statistics about trafficking and the sex industry. With this we can club other forms of commodification which are public – strip clubs, the beauty industry and cross-border private commodification such as in the case of the Punjabi brides.

SO there is indeed a global and an economic element to commodification. Another aspect of commodification which I have not found highlighted in many theoretical articles is the idea of replacement. So technically an object is commodified if it can also be replaced easily. Can the Punjabi brides be replaced as well? Apparently yes. First, in foreign lands the geographic distance that separates the husband and wife from their extended family and insulates them from social pressures, also makes it easier for divorces to occur. Simply, because society does not frown upon divorces as much. Second, in some Punjabi villages (not covered by the documentary) grooms sometimes return whenever they run out of money abroad. They marry a girl, collect a hefty dowry and move back promising to file for immigration. Of course, marrying an NRI comes at a price!!

The documentary about call centers in India is somewhat tangential to these broader ideas of commodification. While it is unclear if women’s work in a call center can be considered commodification, there is no doubt that the rise of call centers has in fact led to a fundamental reordering of women’s roles in the family. In Indian call centers women often work all night, something that would probably have shocked an Indian upper-caste family twenty years ago.
It is now more commonplace to see women outside in the wee hours of the morning. One of the reasons for this change in attitude is the hefty pay packets that call-center employees earn. This is sometimes substantially generous and even equals the money earned by a girls’ parents. Girls are encouraged to use their English language skills and hospitable upbringing and use that to earn money. In return parents overlook the long hours, the nights spent in a call center and the out-station trips taken in the company of male colleagues. Like I said, twenty years ago this would have raised eyebrows.

A consequence of this increased visibility of women as Prem Chowdhry’s study of the National Capital Region and Haryana reveals, is a dramatic rise in the number of rapes reported in Delhi. Not all are linked to call-centers of course. But is a function of more women working outside of the house more generally and more women actually reporting rapes. A couple of years ago, The Haryana govt., which is where most call –centers are located tried to protect women by saying they could not work night shifts. The logic was this would somehow “protect” them from violence and aggression. However, this did not come into effect. Interestingly, the way you rise through the ranks of a call center is by servicing more and more customers. While every call center has a separate incentive structure most do involve answering as many phone calls as you can and finishing your quotas set by your team leader. It is during the night-shifts that Indian call centers are ringing off the hooks because of the time difference. If women were prohibited from working the night shifts it would take them substantially longer to live up to the incentive structure laid down and they would climb the ranks much more slowly.

Recently call centers have imposed a dress code on women. They could wear Indian outfits and Western outfits, but no sleeveless outfits, short skirts or something uncomfortably tight. Cleavages were meant to be hidden and no mid-riff could peep out. Apparently, bare arms lead to more aggression and violence against women, or so the flawed logic stated. This is a common assumption that has led to the imposition of dress codes across the country. Women who reveal their bodies are more likely to be victims of sexual aggression. While there is simply no empirical evidence to back this, such ideas permeate the patriarchal wisdom.

I will conclude by highlighting once more by looking at possible areas of investigation for future research.

1. We need to take a closer look at commodification and break it up or disaggregate it perhaps along the lines of my suggestion
2. We need to disaggregate patriarchy as this monolithic overarching concept and look at how structures of patriarchy differ with respect to culture and region. We also need to understand that women slip into and slide out of different structures of patriarchy and that this needs to be drawn out more in theory.
3. As I have tried to show commodification has a deep impact on the rights of women as citizens and individuals and economic actors. We need this debate to be reflected in a more strident manner at domestic and international levels.
4. We need to problematize models of development, as they exist – neo-liberal economics, which have engendered a certain sexual division of labor in developing countries. Terms like feminization of the labor force conceal more than they reveal. Although I do not talk about this aspect at length, I would be happy to address questions related to this during the question and answer session.