women are active in productive employment, child mortality seems lower (Kishor, 1993) and economic growth increases (Klasen & Lamanna, 2009). The last authors show that especially the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia lost economic growth compared to for instance East Asia, due to more inequality in the labour market (on average a growth 1.1 percentage points less).
Regarding the effect on the position of women of employment, the central focus in this research is empowerment.7 In this respect, the empowering effect of employment is aptly
captured by the story of Zineb Kadmiri:
Like many women in Casablanca, Zineb Kadmiri weaved carpets. With her husband and children she formed a typical working-class family. She learned something about language in her education to become an upholsterer. Gradually her zest for work and ambition brought her economic independence: firstly through sewing, later by becoming a carpet weaver. Works of art is what she made and she sold more and more of her carpets. Her income was much higher than the salary she earned as a seamstress.8
Through her labour, Zineb Kadmire became a successful artist (Mernissi, 2004) and gained economic independence (see also Dworkin, Kambou, Sutherland, Moalla & Kapoor, 2009; Kritz & Makinwa-Adebusoye, 1999; Yount & Li, 2009). More generally, Farah (2006) and Metcalfe (2011) see employment as a dimension of empowerment, and Moghadam (1990: 6) even says that remunerative work in the modern sector is a necessary condition for empowerment.9
When employment is considered in this light, it should however be noted that this
relationship between employment and empowerment does not hold for all forms of employment, though it is said to be particularly strong for gainful (self-)employment. This is the case because, firstly, these kinds of jobs are believed to be more profitable and less vulnerable than unpaid and occasional jobs (e.g. Calvès & Schoumaker, 2004: 1351; Moghadam, 1998: 15–6, 69). Several studies have shown that women’s autonomy goes up due to paid employment (Anderson & Eswaran, 2009; Kibria, 1990; Wolf, 1990). Spitze (1988) also finds that employment fosters both physical and psychological health. An independent regular income can enable women to make decisions about purchasing items without asking their husband for money and it generally increases women’s bargaining power (see Adely, 2009: 114; Afshar, 1998; Gray, Kittilson & Sandholtz, 2006: 297; Olmsted, 2005). Contrary to this, agricultural labour almost exclusively entails working at the family farm without payment (Moghadam, 1998: 69, 78).10 Secondly,
when women enter the (labour) market as part of the public sphere they are able to build a larger social network, learn from their job or colleagues and exchange experiences. For instance, Adely recollects from her fieldwork in Jordan that: “many of the teachers with whom I spoke found that working outside the home gave them the opportunity to socialise with peers and colleagues. Asked if she would like to retire, Mariam, a science teacher, said no because ‘I would become too isolated if I stayed at home.’ “(2009: 114). Moghadam adds that through “employment women become active participants in society, organise and mobilise themselves” (1998: 3).
Thus the type of employment is a characteristic that divides work in groups according to its empowering potential. In this study I have selected the category of non-agricultural and gainful employment, because this is said to have the greatest empowering potential. I do not claim that employment always leads to empowerment. Some positions might harm women’s empowerment, because, for instance, women get trapped at the bottom of the labour market hierarchy (Elson, 2009: 44). However, the overall trend that non-agricultural paid employment does empower women, is enough reason to try to increase our understanding of what influences employment.
In terms of developing an explanatory theory, however, not only the causal effects discussed above, but also the causal mechanisms explaining it are important. Different forms of work are influenced by different factors, or influenced differently by one and the same factor (e.g. Bullock, 1994; Donahoe, 1999; Norris & Inglehart, 2002; Spierings, Smits & Verloo, 2009). In this respect, the difference between agricultural and non-agricultural work seems most important. Women living in a rural area are almost by definition active in some form of agricultural work. Not that they made a very conscious decision to enter the agricultural labour market, but because helping on the family farm is the ‘default’ option for these women; just as it is the ‘default’ option for women in urban areas to stay at home or get involved in home-based work and not to seek employment (Spierings, Smits & Verloo, 2010). As agricultural work is often considered an extension of a woman’s domestic responsibilities, it does not go against the dominant norm in
values values values values values needs oppor tunities individual household community coun try global
societal needs, women’s oppurtunities employment
rural areas, while other forms of work do (Azzam, Abu Nasr & Lorfing, 1985: 18; Jansen, 2004). In other words, for both women working on a family farm and for housewives not being employed the step to being non-agriculturally employed is rather similar (Azzam, Abu Nasr & Lorfing, 1985: 30–1; Spierings, Smits & Verloo, 2010).
In this study, I set out to understand the forces influencing women’s gainful non-agricultural employment, and the framework discussed below is developed with that purpose in mind. However, this framework’s development is grounded in broader debates. Thus, while this study focuses on only one form of women’s economic activity, it might still be used as a springboard to understanding influences on other types of economic activities – the presented meta-level framework can be translated to all kinds of (economic) activities.
2.3 froM defauLt to eMpLoyMent: tHe agent-StruCture deBate
Conceptually, I do not see the change from not being employed (the state in which we are all born) to being employed as a singular switch, but rather as a process that involves two crucial steps (1 and 2) and three decisions (A, B and C). Firstly, if a woman wants to find a job, she needs to enter the labour market. That is step 1 and decision A, made by the woman herself. In the decision-making process, the woman is surrounded by structures and other agents (see section 2.4), but she is the primary actor. What others deem acceptable – other household members, social norms, governmental policies or laws – can be very important in this respect, but even in the hypothetical case that death is the punishment for being employed, seeking a job or not is a decision that can only be made by the woman, unless she is an automaton without any form of agency.
Secondly, once on the labour market, the woman needs to find someone to pay her for her labour. This is step 2 and involves decisions by two main actors: one by the woman to accept a certain job or start a business (B) and one by the employer or customer to pay for the woman’s (fruits of) labour (C). The first is again decided by the woman (B); she may have little choice because she is the only one in the household who can provide an income, but she can still decide not to accept a certain job. In this decision, she might be influenced by which jobs are considered acceptable. Whether she is considered suitable for the job or whether customers buy her products is ultimately decided by the employer/customer (C), who is also subject to external influences. These two steps are not unrelated – for instance, a woman can decide to take a job and enter the labour market at the moment she is invited to start working for a company – but to understand the theoretical mechanisms it is important to disentangle the two conceptually.
From the two steps it takes from being outside the labour market to being employed, it can be derived that both structure and agency play important roles in understanding women’s employment. It also becomes clear that the principal agent is the woman, who lives in specific structures (in Figure 2.2 the individual woman is literally place in the centre). Before the Gender and Development (GAD) approach was introduced, women were often portrayed as “passive recipients” in the development literature and discourse (Rathgeber, 1990: 494, see also Hakim, 1991; Walby, 2009: 72). In the literature on women’s employment in Muslim countries, this tendency still exists. One leading scholar, Moghadam, for instance, builds on the GAD approach (2003: 33–4), but hardly pays attention to a woman’s agency:
The theoretical framework that informs this study rests on the premise that stability and change in the status of women are shaped by the following structural determinants: the sex/gender systems, class, and economic development and state policies that operate within the capitalist world system. (2003: 14, emphasis added)
Another common practice, as others such as Archer (1988) and Walby (2009: 71–5) also observed, is to conflate structure and agent, which leads to a poor understanding of the causal mechanism explaining women’s employment status. In this respect I would like to stress that whereas it seems logical to separate agent and structure, this is often mistakenly equated to the individual woman (agent) and the context (structure). I argue for a better understanding in which women are not the only agents, and in which both structures and agents make up the context. These
11 These are the theoretical levels which should be