Women are systematically disadvantaged within global, national and local economic systems. The search for economic justice is fundamental to all our lives but particularly to the lives of women, in every part of this island and internationally. We are all too familiar with the economic realities of women’s lives reflected in the facts of women carrying out the majority of the world’s work for a fraction of the world’s income and resources. This lack of recognition, the unpaid and undervalued nature of women’s work everywhere, results in distorted economic imagery, understanding and policies.

 Mainstream economic thinking and analysis excludes and marginalises women, their experiences and frequently their economic activities and contributions. Economic policies are male oriented, dominated by the interests of the economies of Western Europe and the United States, and obsessed with the promotion of markets and competition rather than the development and use of resources to meet human needs.

As Helen O’ Connell¹ and Pauline Eccles² document in their different papers included in the resource pack for this conference: 

Women are 70% of the world’s poorest people.

Twice as many women as men cannot read or write.

Women produce half the world’s food but own only 1% of the world’s land.

The number of women in rural areas living in poverty has increased 50% in the last twenty years compared to a 3% increase among men.

Women rarely receive more than 70% of the pay men receive for comparable work.

Women carry out the overwhelming majority of unpaid and low paid work in every part of the economic system.

Most of the unemployed are women.

Women are discriminated against in education and training, face sexual harassment in the workplace and are relegated to low-paid undervalued market jobs.

Women carry the primary and often exclusive responsibility for child-rearing and are simultaneously subject to severe economic hardship.

Women across the world have severely restricted access to legal, institutional and financial resources in their daily struggle for human dignity.

In most countries women work twice as much unpaid time as men.

Economic systems are not gender-neutral – the position of women within the world economy is the outcome of patterns of discrimination and exploitation fundamentally shaped by the subordination and inequalities imposed on women. At a global level, the policies of financial and monetary institutions, together with the policies of trade agreements, perpetuate gross inequalities and exploitation of whole regions of the world economy. This must be effectively challenged – at least in part because these are practices and policies which particularly disadvantage and discriminate against women within exploited regions and countries of the global economy. For individual women economic justice is tied up with economic, and consequently social and personal, independence. Economic independence would 

Socio-economic structures, constructed on the subordination of women, need to be fundamentally transformed so that women are recognised as independent, social and economic units entitled to their human rights both inside the family and outside.  

The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights does clearly state a commitment to socio-economic rights – but this is a commitment rarely translated into practice or met by governments, States and international institutions including the Irish and British which govern this island – and with respect to women it is scarcely ever addressed. 

UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights says 

Everyone as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to the realisation, through national effort and international co-operation, . . . of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for her/his dignity and the free development of her/his personality (Art. 22). . . . Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. . . . Everyone has the right to a standard living adequate for the health and well-being of her/himself and her/his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services (Art. 25).

Yet, across the globe, migrant women, women of indigenous peoples, women workers, women involved in unpaid economic activity, women trade unionists, women of the Third Worlds and women living in poverty are the subject of economic oppression and exploitation. Structural Adjustment Programmes (leading to cut-backs in education and health services in many debt-trapped economies) have been applied under the dictates of international monetary organisations, and accountable to no democratic process, have impoverished increasing numbers of women, undermining their economic and human rights. The life chances, options and choices of girls and women everywhere are circumscribed and subordinated within existing power structures where the interests of corporations, First World economies, establishment institutions, governments, dominant races and individual men dominate over the needs and interests of women. 

It is undeniable that the UN Convention on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights is a flawed human rights instrument. The aspirations of this convention are undermined by a statement that economic, social and cultural rights are to be achieved ‘over time’. Consequently, violations of the convention, even where life-threatening, are not viewed as ‘urgent’ within the established human rights framework. In effect there is a hierarchy of human rights within which economic, social and cultural rights are right at the margins and de-prioritised. Gender-based economic discrimination and exploitation cannot be dealt with through the present system for redress. However, countries who are signatories to the Convention are obliged to produce Reports to the UN and submissions and counter-Reports from NGO’s or individuals can be submitted as part of this process. There is a lot more which we should be looking for, internationally and nationally: 

review of financial institutions with the aim of establishing greater economic justice within the world economy, to achieving sustainable development based on mutuality and co-operation 

the counting and valuing of unpaid work carried out by women in homes, in families, in businesses and in communities 

an end to anti-labour decrees and legislation, structural adjustment policies and economic blockades which result in violations of human rights and impoverishment and discrimination against women 

extended use of social clauses in trade agreements (as argued by Pauline Conroy)³ which would guarantee minimum labour standards and exclude discrimination, the direct involvement of women in economic planning and development at all levels of society 

specific procedures to implement economic and social rights – a protocol providing for individual and group complaints under the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and procedures which would ensure accountability of individual States and governments 

the direct involvement of women in economic planning and development at all levels of society in Ireland 

the removal by the Irish government of its reservations to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women 

Ireland to ratify ILO Convention No 11, establishing the principle of non-discrimination 

We should also seek the active pursuit of economic and social equality in the legal, institutional and policy frameworks applied on this island and, in particular :

independent and adequate social welfare entitlements for women

statutory minimum wage, indexed from an appropriate level

counting and valuing of women’s unpaid work 

desegregation of the jobs market 

full access to training, education and employment for women 

revaluing of women jobs and skills 

comprehensive child and other care services 

Ursula Barry is College Lecturer at the Women’s Education Research and Resource Centre, UCD.

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1. Helen O’ Connell, ‘Going Global - Women and Economic Globalisation’ in Mary Van Lieshout (ed), A Woman’s World – Beyond the Headlines (Attic Press & Oxfam: Dublin, 1996).

2. Pauline Eccles, ‘ " …The Very Voices It had Silenced..."– Women and Development, ’ in Colm Reegan (ed), 75/25 Ireland in an Increasingly Unequal World (Dóchas: Dublin, 1996).

3. Pauline Conroy, ‘Women and the Inter Governmental Conference,’ paper presented to a seminar organised by Patricia McKenna of The Green Party in conjunction with the National Women’s Council of Ireland, 19 September 1996.