Glenn Lynch
September 21, 2005
GLS 410
Unit Three Integration Paper

“World Trade Organization Address – A Call for Global Equality”

During the 1851 Woman’s Rights Convention in Dayton Ohio, renowned abolitionist and feminine activist Sojourner Truth posed the question “if my cup won't hold but a pint and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?” (eserver.org).. Since that speech, much as been done to improve the position of women in society and the working conditions of women within the United States. Men in powerful corporate positions have been more than obliged to filling the pints of women while they continued to fill their own quarts on the profits of new found consumers. But the world has changed and new markets, new governments and new laborers are feeling the same pressures and challenges as the early industrial woman. Globalization has created new markets, new resources and new opportunities for multinational corporations, allowing men to exchange their quarts for gallons of power and wealth. All the while, Western women’s pints have remained unchanged. Women of the third world have found themselves wrapped up in global affairs being forced from their rivers and lakes to drink from the thimble sized portions allotted them by modern global industrialization.

During the early years of industrialization in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century women’s roles began to change dramatically. Cooperative farm work between a man and a woman began to be replaced by family based manufacturing. As these manufacturing practices grew, industries began to realize the benefits of mass production and home based manufacturing transitioned toward large scale production in industrial plants and factories (Bonvillain 163-164). To preserve work within these factories for men, women faced societal pressure to remain out of productive work, retaining more traditional roles of child rearing and domestic upkeep. By 1890, less than 5% of married women and 40% of single women were engaged in economic activities (Bonvillain 161). The women who did work found a differentiation in the roles they were allowed to take up in the work place. Women were limited to less specialized skills than men and significantly less pay. Access to education also remained differentiated. While women could earn advanced degrees, their fields of study was more restrictive than men’s and women found themselves vying for jobs in clerical, nursing, or primary education (Bonvillain 166). By the middle of the twentieth century economic conditions, world wars, and changing social conditions and attitudes led to more opportunities for women outside of the home.

Corporations have learned to take advantage of cheaper women’s labor especially within manufacturing capacities where women were willing to work harder and for less money than men (Bonvillain 171). And while working conditions were becoming more improved for women as the result of women’s labor unions, other union forces were working against them to preserve jobs for men by keeping women’s labor rates low and placing restrictions on the types of job they could perform. American had created a gender bias that still persists to this day. And although women did become more politically active as a result of their economic involvement, gaining suffrage in 1920, American women still make only seventy cents for every dollar made by American men (Bonvillain 178). American women also occupy far fewer managerial roles than men, even in occupations primarily dominated by women. According to the United Nations, American women are also under represented in government (un.org). Yet in these times of globalization we ask nations on the periphery to accept America as the model for industrial and political development.

Today, women in China, India, Africa, Latin America, Asia Minor, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Oceania are farced with similar challenges faced by women in early Industrial America. Stripped of their lands and removed of their modes of economic production, young women the world over are being driven to urban centers and free trade zones in search of work. Labor conditions in some factories mimic the conditions of New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Company in 1911. Factories are being built with substandard safety measures leading to serious injury and death (ilo.org). According to the International Labor Organization, China experiences more than 800,000 industrial related injuries per year with a growing number of accidents resulting in the deaths of more than ten people (asianlabour.org). Statistics provided by United Nation indicate that women comprise of more than 50% of China’s manufacturing workforce (Bonvillain 222). In Mexico, 85% of “maquiladora” workers are young women (Bonvillain 199). Throughout Africa, populations have begun shifting away from interior agricultural centers toward urban sea ports and trade centers ripe with manufacturing (Bonvillain 203). In India, the green revolution has forced families off of farms and into the manufacturing or commercial agricultural sectors. Men are given job preferences over women forcing most into seasonal jobs or jobs within the casual sector. For many women throughout the developing world, additional freedoms in the workplace and new modes of economic production have not translated into new political freedoms. Women’s governmental representation in developing countries is less than 30% with a majority hovering closer to the 20% percent mark (Bonvillain 225). Wages have also remained low. Globally, women in developing countries earn 23% percent less than men. For these women, the promise of modernization has not led to better access to civil rights, fair practices, or even a living wage. Democracy has improved but the standard of living continues to deteriorate for a large percentage of women worldwide.

The time has come for real equality. The time has come for real reform. The time has come to stop measuring a person’s worth or ability solely on the basis of their gender. Women have earned the right for better representation, for better working conditions, and for fairer lives. Not because men have granted it to them but because God has bestowed it on them as an equal in this world. Women can no longer ask for their pints to be filled by men to a half measure of men’s worth, they must demand that their cups are of equal measure to men, of equal quality of men, and be filled by the same waters as men.

Works Cited

Bonvillain, Nancy. Women and Men. Prentice Hall. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 2001.

Fact Sheet on Women in Government. United Nations Website. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/public/percent.htm
ILO Report on the Fire at Kader Industrial LTD. International Labour Organization Website http://www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/safework/hazardwk/fire/fir01.htm

China, Industrial Accidents and Death Statistics, Internation Labour Organization Asian Labor Website. http://www.asianlabour.org/archives/000538.html

Ain’t I a Woman. Race and Ethnicity Website account of Sojourner Truth’s 1851 Speech http://eserver.org/race/aint-i-a-woman.html