Globalization of the Economy and Women's Work in a Sustainable Society

Abstract

This paper outlines and critiques existing paradigms of global development, arguing and establishing that the prevailing capitalist/patriarchal pattern of development that is synonymous with the stimulation of permanent economic growth, is incompatible with a concern for conservation of scarce resources, women's genuine empowerment and a sustainable ecology and society.

It further argues that the term 'gender,' like sustainability, has been co-opted by capitalist patriarchal societies to invisibilize the concrete situation in which women live. The 'woman' question cannot simply be added on to any liberal, positivist or Marxist theory of society, as is being done, but if taken to its logical conclusions, the gender approach will revolutionize all existing paradigms and relations, particularly those of capitalist and socialist industrial patriarchy. In other words, 'adding gender and stirring' will not do for analysis of the relationship between work and sustain ability. The women's question and the question of ecological, social, economic sustainability have to be placed at the-center of our analysis and politics. But this requires a different framework, a different view of an economy and society—a new concept of economics, labor, productive labor, etc.—that the final section of the paper discusses at length.