User:JasonReardon/Global value chain

Gender plays a prominent role in global value chains, because it influences consumption patterns within the United States, and thus affects production on a larger scale. In turn, specific roles within the value chain are also determined by gender, making gender a key component in the process as well. The increase in global sourcing of production has created more and more work in the informal sector as labor intensive assembly work is being put out to homeworkers in the informal sector where women work as self employed traders and producers, casual workers, or sub contract workers. Far more women than men are found in the informal sector, as self-employed workers or subcontractors, while specific jobs and broader fields of work differ between men and women. In more than 90 percent of Sub-Saharan African countries, 89 percent of Southern Asian countries, and 75 percent of Latin American countries, women are more exposed to informal work.

Education levels, legal barriers, and social norms, are all factors that contribute to women being largely concentrated in informal work across global value chains. Work in the informal sector is primarily held by low-skill workers with little to no education. Because labor in the informal sector requires low levels of skill, individuals who are looking for work but lack a strong education frequently find work in the informal sector. Women tend to receive less education than men, in sub-Saharan Africa, women only receive 70 percent of the schooling that men do. Women's concentration in the informal sector is also influenced by social norms. Social norms place high burdens on women because expectations for unpaid care-labor and household duties fall on women. In Senegal, women spend six times as much time as men caring for their families and completing household chores. The time spend in unpaid care labor puts constraints on women's ability to find formal work within a global value chain. Women seeking jobs in the formal sector face extra challenges due to legal barriers. Many Sub-Saharan African countries, for example, prohibit women from signing work contracts or opening bank accounts without their husband's permission.

Within global value chains, the distribution of returns between firms in the formal sector and women in the informal sector is disproportionate. In Zimbabwe's non-traditional agricultural exports value chains (NTAE), women accounted for only 12% of total costs while exporters accounted for 30% importers for 12% and retailers for 46% of costs.

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References

Carr, Marilyn, et al. “Globalization and Home-Based Workers.” Feminist Economics, vol. 6, no. 3, 2000, pp. 123–142., https://doi.org/10.1080/135457000750020164.

ILO. “Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture.” International Labor Organization, 30 Apr. 2018, https://doi.org/https://www.ilo.org/global/publications/books/WCMS_626831/lang--en/index.htm. Malta, Vivian, et al. “Informality and Gender Gaps Going Hand in Hand.” IMF Working Papers, vol. 19, no. 112, 2019, p. 1., https://doi.org/10.5089/9781498314718.001.