Multinationals: An Issue for Women

This issue of Multinational Monitor is about women. We believe it is as important to women as it is to those concerned about the power of corporations.

The power that multinationals exercise in the Third World has a profound effect on women who occupy a subordinate position in social and economic life throughout most of the world. First, women produce commodities for multinationals. Women have long been part of the workforce in factories around the world. But in recent years we are seeing a more distinct phenomenon: multinationals, particularly electronics and textile manufacturers, selectively hire Third World women to assemble or manufacture their products. This phenomenon is occurring primarily in Southeast Asia and in Latin America.

In the community of critics who have studied women workers in multinational export factories, a debate is being waged over whether multinationals are to blame for the exploitation of women workers. In this issue, we have included an example of that debate with a paper by Linda Lim, one of the first researchers .in this field, who argues that multinationals step into existing oppressive social systems and in fact benefit women by providing them with an independence they had not known before and with better wages and conditions than alternative occupations. David O'Connor and Chia Siew Wong respond to her arguments.

While we agree that as a result of their employment, women have broken out of the isolation of their homes and for the first time have access to regular income, we believe Lim has not given sufficient attention to the original causes for those existing oppressive conditions, which may in many instances be traced back to the domination of the Third World by the industrialized West. But Lim's ideas do provide much food for thought. We invite your comments.

Second, women consume products from multinationals. Multinationals have created what has been called the "global supermarket," controlling the production and distribution of many goods in some of the remotest areas of the world. Women, as the traditional providers of food, health care, and household needs for their families, are special targets of corporate marketing. Aggressive promotional campaigns and advertising directed from Madison Avenue convince women that processed foods and infant formula, for example, are better, healthier, and more desirable than local food products or natural breastmilk. Companies sometimes promote untested forms of contraception and drugs for common ailments that have been proven ineffective or harmful in their home countries.

The very ads that instill in American women a sense of inadequacy about their appearance, their housekeeping, and their relationships, perform the same trick on women in the Third World. Jill Gay's article describes how the corporate-controlled media presents false images of women and pushes products which misleadingly promise affluence, sexual desirability, and Western beauty.

Third, women are commodities. for multinationals. Advertisements aimed at men depict skimpily clad women in suggestive poses, usually featured as decorative props to sell cars, office equipment, or alcohol. The implied message is that women's bodies are another piece of merchandise. Women's bodies are also being used in another foreign-oriented industry: the "sex tour." This type of prostitution, especially prevalent in Southeast Asia, caters to tourists and visiting businessmen by including women who masquerade as "tour guides," waitresses, barmaids, or "hospitality girls" as part of tour packages. The agencies arranging such tours are often owned by large multinational hotel and airline companies.

Multinationals, then, create a range of situations and problems for women. Although the prospects for resisting such enormous power might seem grim, Third World women have shown themselves capable of posing a serious challenge to multinational power. As articles in this issue describe, women workers in South Korea and the Philippines have succeeded in politicizing women through selfeducation groups and in changing working conditions through strikes and labor demands. These are but two examples of the growing resistance to multinational power. But as long as multinationals can relocate at the first hint of labor unrest, women will have difficulty sustaining long-term change until they can take collective action with women workers in other countries.

Some organizations such as the International Organization of Consumers Unions have begun to address the problems of women, although in limited ways. They could more broadly incorporate feminist issues into their agenda. And feminists might use international action campaigns such as the infant formula network as a spring-board to launch new campaigns around women's health and consumer issues.

In general, however, organizing efforts around multinationals have not considered the problems of women often enough; correspondingly, feminists have not been active on the problems of multinationals. It is important for women to consider the similarities that they face as industrial workers, as consumers, and as citizens in different countries. Although a wide gap in living standards and in economic and social development exists between industrialized and Third World countries, women on both sides of the gap often share more than they realize. This is especially true of immigrant and minority women in developed countries. Women in the U.S. need to take the lead in expressing support for women abroad and to use their political experience to fight multinationals in their home territory. We hope this issue will provide information and insights which will encourage women in the U.S. and in Third World to develop links among themselves.

- K. S.