Journal of Human DevelopmentVol. 5, No. 3, November 2004.docx

Journal of Human Development
Vol. 5, No. 3, November 2004
Globalization and Securing Rights for Women
Informal Workers in Asia
JEEMOL UNNI
Jeemol Unni is a professor at the Gujarat Institute of
Development Research,
Ahmedabad, India
Abstract The major paradigms of the development discourse
have recently
incorporated the language of rights. To move from the rhetoric
of human
rights to concretely elaborate the content of rights for informal
workers,
particularly women, in Asia is the purpose of this paper. Using
a rights-based
approach to development, the paper takes up the issue of
gender-enabling
worker rights in the context of developing economies that are
increasingly
open to external influences. A matrix of rights consisting of the
right to
work, broadly defined, safe work, minimum income and social
security are
identified as core issues for informal workers. Further, we focus
attention
on four specific groups of informal workers: self-employed
independent
producers and service workers, self-employed street vendors,

dependent
producers such as homeworkers and outworkers, and dependent
wageworkers. Gender-sensitive micro-economic and macro-
economic and
social polices are identified for each of these segments of the
informal
workers. The access to economic, market and social
reproduction needs are
to be addressed simultaneously to ensure the basic matrix of
rights for
women informal workers in developing countries. Each of the
needs of the
workers have to be viewed as a right and a system of
institutions or
mechanisms that will help to bring these rights to the center of
policy have
to be worked out. The claim of women and informal workers for
a voice in
the macro policy decisions through representation at the local,
national and
international levels is at the heart of the rights-based approach.
Key words: Informal sector, Economics, Women, Gender,
Human rights,
Macro policy, Globalization
Introduction
Globalization has raised controversies regarding who benefits
and who
suffers in the process. It has exposed deep divisions between
groups who
have skills and those that do not, those who are mobile and
those who are
not. This has resulted in severe tension between the market and
social

groups, with governments finding it difficult to handle the
situation (Rodrik,
ISSN 1464-9888 print/ISSN 1469-9516 online/04/030335-20 ©
2004 United Nations Development Programme
DOI: 10.1080/1464988042000277233
J. Unni
1997). This has also exposed fault lines between the formal and
informal
economy, the North and South countries, and workers and
employers.
Concomitantly, the question of human rights has taken a
prominent
place in the development discourse. The focus has, however,
been mainly
on political and civil rights as opposed to economic and social
rights. In
recent years interest in economic and social rights has been
growing,
especially with the growing tensions generated by global
capitalism. A critical
issue gap in the literature is how to move from the rhetoric of
human rights
to elaborate concretely the content of specific rights. This paper
is an
attempt in this direction taking the specific context of women in
Asia.
In the following section we review the changing paradigms of
develop-
ment discourse and the inclusion of human rights in the debate.

A gender
analytical framework to study the rights of women workers in
the Asia in
the context of globalization is also presented. Next we discuss
the impact of
globalization on countries North and South, the gender
implications and the
issues of core labor standards that arise. In the final section we
set out the
rights of workers and propose a strategy to take these forward.
Using a
rights-based approach to development, the paper takes up the
issue of
gender-enabling worker rights in the context of an Asia that is
increasingly
open to external influences. We suggest a matrix of rights for
informal
workers and possible macroeconomic and social policies to
achieve these
rights.
Changing paradigms of development discourse: links
between rights and economic development
The evolution of development thinking has come full circle.
From the
original focus on economic development with redistribution of
incomes and
equity as its goal, mainstream economic thinking moved to a
narrow focus
on economic growth, mainly gross domestic product (GDP) and
efficiency.
Economic growth was to be achieved by economic restructuring
through
trade liberalization, privatization and stabilization, which came
to be known

as ‘the Washington Consensus’. The emphasis on adjustment
policies under
this consensus had relegated the discussion on inequality to the
sidelines,
not withstanding a greater concern for poverty in the 1990s. In
contrast,
the United Nations Development Program (UNDP, 1990)
presented a new
development paradigm of human development questioning the
prominent
World Bank/International Monetary Fund strategy of growth in
GDP alone as
a goal of development. The International Labor Organization
(ILO) has
recently come up with a new slogan of ‘‘decent work for all’’
linking human
rights and development (ILO, 1999).
Human rights were first articulated in 1948 with the Universal
Declara-
tion of Human Rights. While this declaration proclaimed both
political and
economic rights, subsequently two separate protocols were
drafted dividing
rights into civil and political rights and economic, social and
cultural
rights, The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
and The
336
Rights for Women Informal Workers in Asia
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

were adopted
in 1966 and entered into force in 1976.
Civil and political rights were thought of as ‘negative rights’. In
other
words, governments should refrain from impinging on these
rights but the
realization of these rights required little direct government
intervention. In
contrast, economic, social and civic rights are ‘positive rights’
since the
government must do more than provide individual entitlements.
These were
seen as exorbitantly costly and requiring massive state-provided
welfare.
Further, while civil and political rights were seen as precise and
possible to
implement immediately, economic rights tended to be vague and
unenforce-
able, and would be realized progressively. Asymmetry of
resource costs
explains the powerful hold of negative rights.
The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of
Discrimination Against
Women is the most comprehensive treaty on women’s rights and
is often
described as the international bill of rights of women. It was
adopted by the
United Nations General Assembly in 1979 and came into force
in 1981. As
of April 2000, the Convention had been ratified and acceded to
by 165
States, making it the second most ratified international human
rights treaty
(United Nations, 2000).

Gender analytic framework
Feminist economics with a focus on the gender division of labor
has
constituted another challenge to traditional economic theory,
and in some
ways to the Washington Consensus. One of the important
insights of
feminist research has been to highlight the limitations of the
macro-structural
adjustment account of globalization (Ganguli-Scrase, 2003).
The second
major contribution of Feminist Economics is to conceptualize
the role of
power and control as a ‘gendered relationship’, which
determines the
disadvantaged outcomes of women in the labor market and in
the household.
Work on the gender dimensions of international trade in
developing
countries has mostly concentrated on its impact in terms of
employment,
income and welfare. However, there has been a rich debate,
mainly contri-
buted by the feminist literature, on the impact of trade on the
social
relations of gender. This literature evaluated changes in the
composition of
employment by gender. It studied the income distribution of
their employ-
ment, not just by the amount of wage payment, but whether and
under
what circumstances the wage incomes were retained by the
women, and

what effect the women’s money earnings had on social relation
with other
members of the household and the broader community. By
distinguishing
between the employment and income effects of trade in this
way, the gender
literature added a new dimension to the debate on impact of
trade on
employment (Joekes, 1999).
The path of globalization, its sequence and timing has been
varied in
the many regions of the world. Before the World
Bank/International Monetary
Fund-induced structural adjustment programs began in many
countries,
export-oriented manufacturing was the path followed by the
first-tier, newly
337
J. Unni
industrializing countries in East Asia to achieve unprecedented
growth. There
is no doubt that this export-oriented path raised incomes and
wages, of
men and women, over a short time. However, the gender-wage
gap and
occupational segregation remained large (Razavi, 1999). In the
accounts of
the determinants of the Asian economic growth, the positive
role of exports
in generating domestic access to foreign technology is

acknowledged. There
is also convergence on the opinion that low wages or income
inequality was
the major source of the growth. A relatively recent account of
the Asian
economic growth goes a step further and shows that economies
with the
widest gender wage gaps grew most rapidly (Seguino, 2000).
Standard trade theory predicts that, in low-income countries,
trade
expansion would be labor intensive and thus enhance labor
incomes. This
simple model overlooked the feature intrinsic to these
economies; namely,
surplus labor. Early Asian export industrialization quickly
exhausted the labor
surplus leading to rising wage rates. But in large countries,
highly elastic
labor supply counters any tendency for real wages to rise,
particularly for
low-skilled labor. In fact, shortage of labor is felt in the high-
skill categories
where wage rates and share of profits rise, leading to increasing
inequality
in the income distribution between skill groups. The low-skilled
categories
are mainly in the informal sector and consist mainly of women.
Further, the
gender impact of undervaluing skills that women bring to the
labor market
undercuts male wage rates and reduces the bargaining power of
labor
(Joekes, 1999).
The gender segregation of occupations the world over is well

docu-
mented (Anker, 1998). Women tend to concentrate in specific
occupations
that are low-skilled in the production sector, or based on a
gendered notion
of women’s work mainly in the service sectors such as
education, health or
‘care work’. Much of this work is in the informal sector. Even
in countries
with a large modern sector, a significant proportion of women
are in informal
jobs, without formal contracts and associated benefits
(Charmes, 2000). In
recent decades, however, an increasing participation of women
in the labor
force and a small fall in men’s employment is accompanied by a
feminization
of many jobs traditionally held by men (Standing, 1999a). But
again this
probably implies a deskilling process through new technologies,
or an
informalization process through out-sourcing. Globalization is
partly responsi-
ble for this phenomenon, through which the labor force is made
more
flexible.
Globalization policies involved increasing the openness to trade
with
other countries. Feminist economists since the mid-1980s have
argued
that the distribution of cost and benefits of the market-oriented
structural
adjustment programs have implications for gender inequalities
(Cagatay et al.,
1995; Grown et al., 2000). While new forms of inequalities have

resulted
from this process, it has also opened up new spaces for women
to enter the
labor market and free themselves to some degree from
patriarchal clutches.
These opportunities for greater independence also help to
interrogate and
modify gender relations and ideologies (Ganguli-Scrase, 2003).
The third major contribution of Feminist Economics has been to
call
338
attention to the serious neglect of the non-market sector of the
economy.
They point to the fact that the dominant economic theory views
labor as a
non-produced input and thus disregards the role of unpaid labor
in social
reproduction, and in household and community work. Further,
the neglect
of the care economy was reflected in the dominance of the male
breadwinner
model, which has shaped much of social policy in industrialized
and develop-
ing countries. The underlying norms on gender roles and
responsibilities are
also critical in defining the opportunities available for women,
and even
men, in the course of development.

Policies designed to foster greater supply of ‘caring labor’
appears
‘unproductive’ or ‘costly’ when viewed in terms of economic
efficiency and
narrow measures such as the contribution to the GDP. The
erosion of family
and community solidarity imposes enormous costs that are
reflected in high
crime rates and a social atmosphere of anxiety and resentment.
In the past,
the sexual division of labor based on subordination of women
helped to
minimize the cost and difficulty of care and nurturance of
human capital.
Today, however, the cost of providing caring labor should be
explicitly
confronted and fairly distributed (Folbre, 1999).
An impact of globalization, when countries compete for a share
in the
global market, is the need to cut costs. The costs and burden of
care and
social reproduction are pushed on to the women, who are known
to take
the full responsibilities of feeding the families at great cost to
themselves. It
has been documented that the economic and social impact of the
East Asian
crisis fell more heavily on women than on men. Apart from the
direct impact
on their capacity as earners, the indirect impact on women was
their role
as the providers of the last resort or the de facto safety nets of
society (Floro
and Dymski, 2000; Lim, 2000).

Another impact of globalization is that labor is less mobile
compared
with capital and, given the constraints already noted, in general,
male
informal labor is more likely to be mobile than their female
peers. However,
an interesting and new impact of globalization observed
recently is the flow
of women migrants from the South countries, including Asia, to
the North
countries, recruited to meet the demands of child care, domestic
work, care
for the elderly and handicapped (Chant, 1992). The
incorporation of women
into domestic and care work partly reflects the inequalities
arising from
globalization, the gender segregation in the labor market and
the fact that
third world women have few skills other than their domesticity
to improve
the economic status of their households (Raijman et al., 2003).
Women are constrained by their social reproduction functions as
well
as cultural factors so that they are less mobile. This has
implications for the
type of work to which they have access, which with the
globalization
process is increasingly in informal work. In a recent article on
decent work
and development policies, Fields (2003) places the priority for
‘decent work’
agenda on helping ‘the poorest workers in the world’. Women
informal
workers in Asia would clearly qualify for such attention. There
is an urgent

need to re-assess and bring to the fore the economic and social
rights of
these women as members of the growing workforce.
339
J. Unni
Trade and core labor standards
Globalization through liberalization of trade affects the
countries in the
North in three possible ways. The first, examined most
extensively in the
literature, is the effect on the relative demand for skilled and
unskilled
workers. This implies an inward shift in the demand curve for
low-skilled
workers in advanced countries. Early studies used the reigning
Heckscher–
Ohlin theory of international trade and focused on how much
trade reduced
the demand for unskilled labor in the developed countries.
The second impact of international trade was the greater ease of
substitution of low-skill workers in the advanced countries by
workers across
borders through subcontracting or foreign direct investment.
This implied
an increase in the elasticity of demand for workers in advanced
countries or
a flattening of the demand curve for labor. The impacts on labor
markets are
the volatility of earnings and hours of work, and the decline in

bargaining
power in the workplace. In an open economy the first impact
leads to what
has been commonly called the ‘race to the bottom’. Countries in
the South
compete with each other to lower labor standards, and this
forces countries
in the North to do so as well to prevent footloose capital and
employers
from deserting them (Rodrik, 1997). The impact on bargaining
power is less
well studied. All this had led to the third effect of international
trade increase
in job insecurity in the 1990s in the North. Farber (1996) found
that the rate
of job loss in 1991–1993 was higher than in the severe recession
of early
1980s.
The consequences of the popularly perceived impact of
globalization
on labor markets in advanced countries has been the demand for
‘fair trade’
and a ‘level playing field’ in international trade. Much of the
discussions
surrounding the new issues in trade policy are those of core
labor standards,
environment, competition policy and corruption. The
deregulation of mar-
kets and contradictions within the reform policies led to
increasing wage
inequalities and volatility in labor conditions. With the
increasing focus on
these issues, globalization increases conflict between nations
over domestic
norms and the social institutions that embody them.

The response of the World Bank and of the North countries was
favorable to the articulation of core labor standards applicable
to all countries
to counter the declining standards. A similar response came
from trade
unions of the North faced with a decline in jobs in the formal
sector and
declining union membership. Finally, to the international
agencies such as
the United Nations, the ILO and the World Trade Organization,
with their
battery of international laws, rights and conventions also, the
core labor
standards seemed a solution to the negative impact of
globalization. Thus,
with the backing of all these institutions, core labor standards
and the talk
of a social clause in international trade agreements became a
reality.
The ILO, in its International Labor Conference, June 1998,
adopted the
Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. The
worker’s
rights referred to as the ‘‘core labor standards’’ of the ILO
included in this
document are seven ILO Conventions. These Conventions focus
on issues of
340

the right of freedom of association and effective recognition of
the right to
collective bargaining (Convention Numbers 87, 1948 and 98,
1949); elimina-
tion of all forms of forced or compulsory labor (Convention
Numbers 29,
1930 and 105, 1957); effective abolishing of child labor and
minimum
age (Convention Numbers 138, 1973 and 182, 1999); and
elimination
of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation, and
equal
remuneration (Convention Numbers 100, 1951 and 111, 1958).
Workers in developing countries and labor standards
The insecurities faced by informal workers in the process of
globalization
require a whole matrix of rights, and the core labor standards,
as formulated
earlier, do not address these.1 Other ILO Conventions such as
Home Work
Convention, 1996 (Convention Number 177) need to be included
in the
core labor standards in order to address these workers.
The self-employed traders and manufacturers, who form a major
compo-
nent of the informal workforce in Asia, are not represented in
these conven-
tions. The rights of market workers to bargain with local
authorities and
home-based workers with intermediaries must also be asserted,
besides that
of employers and employees, and appropriate institutional
structures created.

These different conventions partly encompass the matrix of
rights required
to take account of the specific insecurities faced by the informal
workers.
However, the realization of these rights actually requires a
context specific
articulation and voice at various levels.
Worker rights and macro policy
How does the discussion on globalization inform worker rights
for informal
workers? By pointing to the lacuna in the policy reforms that
accompany
the globalization process, feminist economists have pointed to
alternative,
gender-aware policies consistent with the goal of human
development. The
changing paradigms in the development discourse pointed to a
possible
convergence between social and economic policies in response
to the
dangers of globalization faced by both North and South
countries.
It has been argued that the soundness of macro-economic policy
should
be judged from the point of view of social justice. While the
rights-based
approach has become quite prominent in the discourse, it has
not been
translated into any precepts of macro-economic policy. A
reformulation of
macro-economic policy and international trade regimes that puts
develop-
ment first is more likely to be gender sensitive. Focus on

development and
reduction in poverty that goes beyond the exclusive focus on
income and
consumption levels to embrace human capabilities can be
considered a more
rights-based approach (Rodrik, 2001).
Gender-sensitive macro policies should address the issues of
economic/
market access of the workers in the informal sector and their
social reproduc-
tion needs simultaneously. The policies to be addressed are
macro-economic,
labor market and social reproduction policies. The informal
workers are a
341
J. Unni
heterogeneous group having varied needs. Macro policy has to
keep the
specific segments of the informal workers in view in order to
devise policies
appropriate for them, or at least not to discriminate against
them.
Rights of informal workers
We present in the following a basic matrix of rights to which an
informal
worker should be entitled. While these rights are addressed to
all informal
workers, the specific needs of women informal workers will be

addressed
in detail. We further identify specific groups of informal
workers and suggest
how macro-economic and social policies could address these
basic rights.
! The right to work. The concern about the implications of
assuring a right
to work where work is considered as a job has bedeviled the
debate
(Standing, 2002). A large proportion of informal workers
generate incomes
for themselves through self-employment or dependent wage
employment.
The guarantee of the right to work requires policies that
enhance chances
for such work. It does not necessarily imply direct government
provisioning
of ‘jobs’.
! The right to safe work. This implies safety at the place of
work, not just
in terms of non-hazardous work, but safe conditions and
occupational
health.
! The right to minimum income. This right is central to the work
and life
of informal workers. Without income security no other security
is possible
or meaningful. It entails polices that focus on productivity,
incorporate
new technology, upgrade skills and enhance access to credit and
markets
of informal producers and service workers.

! The right to social security. Besides the minimum incomes,
the require-
ment for security of health, food, education, shelter, childcare
and old age
are prime concerns and should be part of the basic right of the
worker.
Claim-makers and duty-bearers
One of the key issues of a rights approach is who are the ‘claim-
makers’ and
who are the ‘duty-bearers’ against whom the claims are made?
For each
specific right, the ‘duty-bearers’ that should be addressed by
each ‘claim-
maker’ need to be identified so that specific policy formulations
can be
worked out. In the case of informal workers, due to the lack of a
clear-cut
employer–employee relation it is not so obvious who is
responsible for the
betterment of the conditions of the workers, and hence
identification of the
‘duty-bearers’ is not easy. One method of overcoming this is to
identify the
main entity or authority responsible for the issues to be
negotiated. The
‘duty-bearer’ is thus the institution that exerts one or more form
of control
over the workers. This could mean that there is more than one
‘duty-bearer’.
Claim-makers
While much of the discussion on specific rights applies to all
informal

workers irrespective of gender, women are the focus of our
attention due to
342
their double burden of work and social reproduction
responsibilities. The
women workers in the informal economy also mainly belong to
the lowest
segment in the hierarchy of the labor market. The foreclosure of
the matrix
of rights detailed here can lead to destitution for much of the
informal
women workers. For purposes of illustration we focus on four
broad
segments of the informal economy as ‘claim-makers’.2
! Self-employed: own account/ home-based (independent).
! Self-employed: street vendors.
! Dependent producer: outworker/home workers.
! Dependent wageworkers.
Voice and organization
The growth of the informal economy has given rise to what has
been
called a widening ‘representation gap’ in the world of work
(ILO, 2000).
Globalization and its impact on workers, increasing inequalities
between
groups and more flexible workforce has made organization of
workers

through traditional enterprise-based trade union methods
difficult, and to a
certain extent irrelevant. Further, women form ‘‘the majority of
workers in
sub-contracted, temporary or casual work, part-time work and
informal
occupations’’ and hence ‘‘more women than men are in
unorganized and
unprotected jobs that lack security of tenure’’ (ILO, 2000, p.
11). Women
being responsible for work and social reproduction tend to
perpetuate
poverty in families. Women workers in the informal economy
are often not
recognized as workers in terms of labor legislation. This is
partly because
these workers often do not have a clear employer–employee
relationship
being engaged in self-employment, homework and street
vending. The
method of organization and the needs and demands of these
workers are
therefore very different from the traditional ones.
In this paper we use the term organization in two senses: the
broad
institutions required for the purpose, such as informal
associations and non-
government organizations; and the broader task of organization
as a quest
for legal recognition and right to work for these workers. The
need to define
‘duty-bearers’ is particularly acute for these workers, and their
‘demands’ are
much wider than mere wage bargaining. What we describe in the
following

for different segments within the informal workforce includes
the various
elements of this bargaining process — and it is truly a rights-
based approach.
A matrix of rights and macro policies addressed to them, for
each segment
of the informal workers, the claim-makers, is presented in Table
1 and is
now discussed in detail. The ‘duty-bearers’ for each right and
segment of the
informal workers are also identified.
The right to work.
Self-employed: own account/home-based (independent). The
right to
work for this section is addressed to the governments of the
countries, who
become the duty-bearers, so that policies that will enhance the
chances of
343
J. Unni
Table 1. Gender-sensitive economic and social policy in a rights
framework
Matrix of rights and macro policies
Workers in the Minimum
informal economy Work Safe work income Social security
Self-employed: Credit policy Occupational and Rural/urban

Child care
own account Market/demand policy life insurance policy
infrastructure Elder care
workers/home- Input/output prices Skill and Old age/widow
based Alternative trading technology pensions
corporations policy Housing policy
Legal recognition Social infrastructure
Trade unions
Self-employed: Credit policy Occupational safety Urban policy:
Child care
street vendor Urban infrastructure Insurance policy space and
Elder care
Urban policy: space infrastructure Old age/widow
Legal recognition: Legal recognition pensions
license/identity cards Health insurance
Housing policy
Social infrastructure
Dependent Subcontract agency Tripartite bodies International
Child care
producer: Legal recognition Informal trade policy Elder care
outworker/ Housing policy associations Skill Old age/widow
homeworker organization development pensions
Technology Health insurance
Housing policy
Dependent wage Investment in domestic Legal recognition
Minimum wage Health insurance
worker industry Occupational safety (hedging against
Community

Industry board Insurance policy inflation) associations
organization Minimum days Child care
of work Elder care
Paid leave Old age/widow
Trade unions pensions
Provident fund
self-employed production and service activities are improved.
Macro-eco-
nomic policies have an impact on these women workers in the
informal
sector through aggregate demand for domestic products. Self-
employed
workers are also indirectly affected by trade liberalization
policies if their
products are substituted by the imports (negative effects) or
their products
form part of the export sector (positive effects). Macro policies
affect the
prices of competing imports or imported raw material, the price
of export
goods, and determine the scale and pattern of government
procurements
(e.g. food grains in India).
To encourage small enterprises, a credit policy with differential
rates of
interest and special financial institutions to cater to these
groups is required.
The program of rural credit and self-help groups, or micro-
finance, will
facilitate such economic activities. The micro-finance sector has

specially
344
addressed the needs of women informal workers in South Asia,
with the
Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and Self Employment Women’s
Association
(SEWA) in India being the most well-known examples.
Besides credit, another very important and less discussed
constraint
faced by women self-employed workers is access to markets, or
demand for
their products. Policies could encourage the setting up of
alternative trading
corporations to help credit and market access for the scattered
rural products
of producers of traditional handicrafts and small business
products in which
a large proportion of women are engaged. Non-governmental
organizations
(NGOs) and other private organizations could also be the ‘duty-
bearers’ to
undertake such operations. Such alternative trading institutions
could help
to secure export markets for the self-employed producers.
Legal recognition of trade associations and of the small
enterprises and
workers would help in the business process such as access to
credit or

markets. Legal recognition is also important in the process of
negotiations
with the concerned authorities. At the micro level, SEWA, India
negotiated
with government hospitals and prisons to procure fruits,
vegetables and eggs
and with government offices to contract cleaning services from
self-employed
enterprises organized into cooperatives (Chen et al., 2001).
Street vendors. A large proportion of the urban workers are on
the
streets engaged in trading and a multiple of other activities such
as informal
transport. This presents new challenges in urban policy. The
right to work
of these workers is affected by the large urban infrastructure
projects, such
as flyovers and multiplex retail trading outlets that compete for
urban space
and product markets. The ‘duty-bearers’ are often the municipal
corporations
and local authorities. A range of urban policies and regulatory
controls are
possible. At a broad level, land policy and zoning, health
standards to be
maintained by street food traders, regulating, registering and
providing
licenses to business. All these become very important for the
informal
enterprises because they affect the legality of their activities
and are a source
of harassment by the police, urban authorities and the local
hoodlums.
Establishment of government and municipal markets would have
a positive

effect (Chen et al., 2001). The street vendors need working
capital to
purchase their goods and often have to depend on local
moneylenders
paying exorbitant interest. Credit institutions and policies to
cater to their
needs of small loans, on daily basis for perishable goods, would
enhance
their right to work.
Dependent producer: outworker/home workers. The right to
work
for outworkers is clearly affected by globalization where there
may be an
international movement of capital to low-wage sites. A very
large segment
of the homeworkers and out-sourced workers are women. The
‘duty-bearers’
in this case are the transnational corporations. Besides
international subcon-
tracting, a lot of the manufacturing units within the country also
engage in
subcontracting out to outworkers and homeworkers. Who then
constitute
the duty bearers? The government of the developing countries
also has a
345
J. Unni
duty towards these workers, and policies that facilitate such
activities and
protect the workers would enhance their right to work.

In some developed countries, subcontracting agencies keep a
record of
all subcontracting enterprises, with information of the type of
facilities
available, skills of workers, and so on. Such a resource base
would be useful
to allow for the diffusion of this knowledge and facilitate the
linkages
between the enterprises wanting to subcontract out. Some form
of an agency
is also necessary to maintain the records of the outworkers and
homeworkers,
together with information about their skills and equipment
available. These
agencies also provide a form of legal recognition to these
workers, which is
necessary to avail of various facilities such as credit.
Development of rural and urban infrastructure with a specific
focus on
the needs of the self-employed, home-based and homeworkers,
including
rural roads, telecommunication network, financial institutions,
bus and other
public transport facilities, for both people and goods, would
enhance
employment. Since many of these workers are home based, a
policy with
regard to housing, availability of housing loans for purchase of
a new house
or upgrading the existing one would facilitate their capacity to
get contracts
for work. Organization of these workers into representative
associations or
unions would help in the process of negotiating for better piece-

rates and
other facilities.
Dependent wageworkers. Policies intended to increase
employment,
measured in both the quantity and quality of jobs, depend on
increased
investment in the domestic economy. Trade liberalization and
encouragement
to foreign direct investment can help increase jobs in the short
run, but they
could have negative impact through high capital mobility as
discussed earlier.
Women informal workers are often engaged in the Special
Economic Zones
with few labor rights. Policies to encourage the domestic
industry to grow
and encourage traditional activities (e.g. Handicraft Ministries
in India) help
the informal workers and generate more widespread benefits of
growth.
Industry Boards devoted to certain traditional industries could
help in access
to new technologies, skills, credit and markets for the products.
Again skill
training and use of new technologies have to include women
workers if the
benefits of such programs are to reach them. This might involve
manipulating
the gender norms of the society with regard to what work is
suitable to
women. Organization and representation are important for these
workers in
order to negotiate with the trade associations or governments
for their rights.

The right to safe work.
Self-employed: own account/home-based (independent). The
claim
makers and duty-bearers of the occupational health and safety in
the case of
these workers are the same. That is, in the developing country
context these
workers are responsible for their own health and safety and for
that of any
employees and family workers employed in their enterprises or
homes. This
actually amounts to having no rights of safe work. In the
context on
globalization and privatization of health and insurance, it is
possible to argue
346
that such workers who generate their own incomes should be
entitled to
life and health insurance facilities at reasonable rates. Sector-
specific health
and insurance schemes addressed to their work situations would
be one
issue on which to focus a rights-based formulation. Health
needs of the
women workers require special attention and health and
insurance schemes
have to be gender-sensitive to these issues.
Street vendors. In urban areas, infrastructure needs of the street

vendors such as electric lights, water and sanitation facilities
and garbage
disposal would also enhance their rights to safe work. Street
vendors are
faced with specific problems of safety at the place of work,
arising out of
lack of legal recognition of their economic activity. The ‘duty-
bearers’, local
governments, could issue license to conduct business, identity
cards and
also provide specific locations to conduct such activities.
Health and insur-
ance policies are also prime needs of these workers.
Dependent producer: outworker/home workers. In the context of
globalization, the duty-bearers of the right to safe work of the
outworkers
and homeworkers should be the transnational corporations
whose products
are manufactured by these workers. Product labeling and codes
of conduct
for transnational corporations are favored strategies. The impact
of such
movements on the right to work and living standards of workers
in the
developing country are, however, debated (Lee, 1997; Basu,
1999).
Workers in outsourced sweatshops and homeworkers are
disproportion-
ately women, and the issues regarding long hours of work, night
work and
health and sanitation needs of these workers require special
consideration.
Often there is a long chain of subcontractors between the
corporations and

the ultimate worker. Increasingly, trade unions and federations
of homework-
ers are trying to place the responsibility for occupational health
and safety
on these final employers. Legal recognition of these workers is
crucial to
ensure their inclusion in any scheme for health and other
benefits. At the
national level, tripartite bodies with representation of workers,
employees
and governments would help to implement safe work conditions
for these
workers.
Dependent wageworkers. For this segment of informal workers
the
duty-bearer is clearly the employer, and in most cases one or
multiple
employers can be identified. However, fixing the responsibility
of occupa-
tional health and safety on them is difficult in the developing
country
context. Legal rights of workers and legal recognition of their
status as
employees have to be first guaranteed. The legal framework and
a rights-based
approach to this issue may bear fruit overtime, with informal
associations of
workers, NGOs and legal activists playing a role.
The right to minimum income. The notion of Social Income (SI)
is
extremely helpful in breaking the restricted concept of income
as only what
comes in the form of a wage, either through self-employment, or
through a

347
J. Unni
form of employment in which there is a clear employer–
employee relation-
ship. Five possible sources of income act as elements of the
more comprehen-
sive abstract concept, SI, the individual’s social income:
SIóWòCBòEBòSBòPB
where W is the money wage; CB is the value of benefits or
support provided
by the family, kin or the local community; EB is the amount of
benefits
provided by the enterprise in which the person is working; SB is
the value
of state benefits provided, in terms of insurance or other
transfers, including
subsidies paid directly or through firms; and PB is private
income benefits,
gained though investment, including private social protection
(Standing,
1999b, p. 80). The right to minimum income would include the
elements of
W and EB, while the right to social security would include the
benefits
accruing from community (CB), state (SB) and the private
sector (PB).
Self employed: own account/home-based (independent). The
wage

W may be thought of more generally as ‘earnings’ or ‘profits’,
as the word
‘wage’ is so closely related to the idea of ‘employment by
someone else’.
Income insecurity is characteristic of the lives of all informal
workers,
including those who are highly skilled and well paid. The level
of income is
determined by the productivity of work, which itself is based on
the
production technology and skills available to the entrepreneur.
The average
value of fixed capital used by the informal self-employed
worker is often
very low, indicating a low level and quality of capital
equipment and,
consequently, low productivity of the employment.
For many informal workers, this W may come from more than
one
source (for people working in more than one job) and it may be
a variable
and erratic amount. In the informal economy, where women tend
to be
engaged in low-skilled work, they will have a smaller W than
men. The
gender analytic framework discussed earlier also raised the
issue of who has
control over the money income earned by the women. The
variability of
income is a major source of insecurity, particularly for those
operating at
low levels of capital and, consequently, incomes. That is,
besides a low value
of W, variability of it is a major issue for informal producers
and service

workers. Here again women may be engaged in activities that
are more
seasonal leading to greater fluctuations in income. Macro policy
to focus on
this has to address issues of productivity, technology and skills
of these
enterprises and workers. Development of rural and urban
infrastructure such
as electricity at reasonable rates and transport facilities would
enhance the
income security of these workers.
Street vendors. The minimum incomes of informal traders on
the
street are affected by the kind of urban policies suggested for
the right to
work. The major challenge is to devise a workable environment
where these
workers can trade in peace on the streets in order to guarantee
minimum
incomes. The local governments are the ‘duty-bearers’.
348
Dependent producers: homeworkers and outworkers. The wage
W,
or income, of dependent producers is also affected by
variability of income
and irregularity in business. In India, for example, the domestic
garment
industry is buoyant during the festival seasons and depressed
otherwise. The

dependent producers in global value chains such as the garment
workers
producing for top retailers in the United States or the United
Kingdom are
affected by fluctuating international fashions and business
cycles. Homework-
ers in the global garment chain in Thailand were severely
affected by the
financial crash of 1997 (Homenet Thailand and ILO, 2002). The
‘duty-
bearer’, the governments of developing countries, could
regulate the flow
of international capital to secure the rights of such workers.
Access to new
skills and technology is necessary to enhance their capacity to
earn and
improve their incomes and also to move to other economic
activities in case
of loss of current work.
Dependent wageworkers. The main insecurities faced by wage-
workers, either casual or working for unregistered enterprises,
is often the
low level of absolute wages. They face fluctuations in their
incomes due to
lack of employment or underemployment, dependent on the
vagaries of the
sector and the local market conditions. In some subsectors in
India these
activities are covered under the Minimum Wages Act, but the
workers are
rarely paid the stipulated wages. This alone does not ensure
minimum
incomes unless a minimum number of days of employment are
also stipulated.
Trade unions of informal workers are crucial to improve the

bargaining
power for wage and income negotiations.
In countries with good social security coverage, those in formal
employ-
ment typically get access to a variety of social benefits through
the work-
place — occupation-related benefits (EB). Sometimes called
‘the social wage’,
and usually covered by labor standards legislation, the package
would
typically cover paid holiday, sick leave, maternity (and
paternity) benefits,
workers compensation, and a pension fund. A broader package
could include
housing loan, loans for children’s education, and subsidized
purchase of
vehicles. SEWA, India provides an example of poor people
building their
own financial and insurance institutions. Vimo SEWA is a
scheme of integrated
insurance for SEWA members, which links insurance with
savings and a trade
union approach. In includes health and death insurance and
maternity
benefits, and can cover the worker’s husband and children
depending on
the scheme she opts for (Sinha, 2003).
Very few informal workers have any access to EB, or enterprise
benefits.
Some may get ‘holidays’ in the sense of quiet times, on say
public holidays
(where informal trade and activity depends on formal economic
activities,
and these close down). Those employed by others may operate

under
informal rules that allow time off work, for sickness or for
maternity, without
being penalized. However, the time off would translate into
foregone income.
Informal agreements and exchanges also operate in the sphere
of
domestic work, where workers may get from their employers
such things as
second-hand clothing, hand-me-down school books, assistance
with trans-
349
J. Unni
port, and help with medicines. Informal agricultural work may
also come
with some benefits, such as a piece of land to grow own crops
or to graze
one’s own stock, or getting allocations of the harvest. However,
this EB is
not reliable; workers cannot plan around it. In both domestic
and agricultural
employment, people are locked into subordinate and feudal type
of relation-
ships, which are by definition insecure (Lund and Unni, 2002).
The right to social security. The first cut in the event of
liberalization has
traditionally been in the social sectors of health and education.
These also
include the social reproduction policies such as childcare,

health insurance,
old age pensions, elder care and primary schooling. A strong
gender focus
on development and public awareness of the ill-effects of such
cuts are likely
to put pressure on the governments to re-consider such cuts.
Women would
especially benefit from social infrastructures such as sources of
drinking
water, schooling facilities and health facilities.
The components of social income that can be considered part of
right
to social security are community benefits (CB), state benefits
(SB) and private
benefits (PB). As regards CB — the benefits coming from
family, kin, or
community — we know that in poorer families and in poorer
communities,
the material value of CB is low. The W income from informal
work may be
the main source of financial support. Unpaid caring work is
more often done
by women. One component of the CB is the benefits and support
from ‘the
local community’. Who do we mean by ‘the local community’?
More time is
spent on this ‘community input’ by women than by men. For
‘social capital’
to be effective, it requires that people expend time and costs on
building
‘it’. For a woman working informally, she is likely to expend
time and costs
on this CB both inside and outside her household (Lund and
Unni, 2002).

In the rights-based framework, women informal workers are the
claim-
makers for this community benefit (CB). At the same time it is
the woman’s
input in terms of time and physical energy that goes into the
building of this
community benefit. To that extent, the woman becomes the
duty-bearer as
well. In some sense this is social capital, and there is a tendency
in the neo-
liberal thinking to be gender-blind to this notion. Standing
(1999b) sees one
path to greater income security through greater reliance on
strengthening
civil society organizations. Participatory models of community
organizations
need to be evolved, with the support of the government and
NGOs, which
include women informal workers as partners if her right as a
claim-maker is
to be met. While this may seem a feasible strategy, it may merit
mainly
people who have built up firm economic and social assets, the
wealthy, and
it would be a policy route full of risk for the already poor and
particularly
women in Asia who have less voice in society and,
consequently, in civil
society organizations.
With regard to state benefits (SB) there has been a withdrawal
in
both developed and developing countries, from state social
provision. We
discussed earlier, as a part of the right to work, how strong state
support is

important not just in direct provision, but also by regulating the
way in
which the market operates — by regulating minimum levels of
savings for
350
cooperatives to function (which can be a barrier to formation of
cooperatives
by poorer workers), for example, or by regulating financial
institutions.
Where government takes a hands-off stance, the market and
private institu-
tions will not usually operate in a pro-poor direction. A rights-
based approach
to force the state to perform this duty is necessary in the current
context of
withdrawal of the state.
With regard to access to schemes of private protection, or PB,
the
working poor will not usually be able to make contributions to
private
schemes of social protection. Some are so poor that they are not
able to
save; others may want to and be able to save, but there are no
appropriate and
affordable institutions through which to do so. However, the
responsibility to
protect this right should be harnessed to visualize a social
insurance program
through the private sector that is inclusive of poor working and

non-working
women. The duty-bearers are partly the NGOs and other actors
in civil
society.
Conclusion
A rights-based approach is useful in putting pressure on
national governments
to take a stand in favor of the poor and informal workers. The
rights
framework gives an overarching claim to what can be
considered basic and
universal human rights. It can be used to claim a voice in the
macro-
policy-making dialog. The demand has to be inclusion of
women and the
representatives of informal workers in the political process and
in discussions
on the macro policy agenda. Participation of the civil society
institutions,
NGOs and trade unions can help to build up momentum towards
social
dialog, a first step in this process. A method of assessing the
government
budget, called social-audit or people-centered budget, can be a
useful tool to
assess the differential impact on formal/informal, men/women
and rich/
poor. This form of rights-based approach has been used in the
Australian and
South Africa gender budget audit (Budlender, 2000).
In this paper we discussed the process of globalization leading
to
increasing insecurities for workers in Asia. We used a gender

analytic
framework that specifically recognizes that women informal
workers are
doubly burdened by their informality in work relationships and
by being the
‘economic and social provisioners of the last resort’. The
impact of globaliza-
tion on the North countries had led to the formulation of core
labor
standards. We argue that the formulation of core labor standards
of the ILO
does not address the impact of globalization and insecurities
among informal
workers in Asia.
We define a matrix of rights consisting of the right to work,
broadly
defined, safe work, minimum income and social security as core
rights for
informal workers. Further, we focus attention on four specific
groups of
informal workers, self-employed independent producers and
service workers,
self-employed street vendors, dependent producers such as
homeworkers
and outworkers, and dependent wageworkers, who form the
bottom of the
labor market hierarchy. The impact of globalization and
national trade
351
J. Unni

liberalization policies on the women informal workers are
shown to be
particularly harsh. In this context the specific rights or
‘demands’ of these
women workers are articulated. Gender-sensitive micro-
economic and macro-
economic policies and social polices addressed to each specific
right and for
each of the four segments of the informal workers are spelled
out.
The rights-based approach focuses attention on the claims of
women
informal workers, generally excluded groups, in the macro-
economic and
social policies. In order for this approach to produce the desired
results an
institutional framework has to be set-up that will ensure voice
and representa-
tion for women and informal workers in the social dialog of
development.
Each of the needs of the workers has to be viewed as a right,
and a system
of institutions or mechanisms to help bring these rights to the
center of
policy have to be worked out. The access to economic/market
and social
reproduction needs are to be addressed simultaneously to ensure
the basic
matrix of rights for women informal workers. A rights-based
formulation
requires voice and representation of workers in the informal
economy
through their organizations in all institutions where decisions
are made that
affect their rights to work, safe work, minimum income and

social security.
The claim for a voice in the macro policy decisions through
representation
at the local, national and international levels is at the heart of
the rights-
based approach.
Acknowledgements
An early draft of this paper was prepared while the author was a
Fellow at
the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW),
Washington, DC,
USA, during the period April–June 2002. Discussions with Nata
Duvvury,
Richard Strickland, Caren Grown, Simel Esim and Chhaya
Kunwar helped
shape the arguments in the paper. Discussions with participants
at the
seminar at ICRW helped clarify arguments. Nata Duvvury,
Stephanie Seguino,
Joann Vanek and Uma Rani painstakingly went through earlier
drafts of the
paper and provided incisive comments. Comments from an
anonymous
referee of the journal are highly appreciated. The author is
grateful to all of
them and to the staff of ICRW for making her stay comfortable
and academic-
ally fruitful. The author also thanks the Ford Foundation and the
Gujarat
Institute of Development Research, Ahmedabad for financial
and institutional
support.
Notes

1 For an interesting view on the impact of imposition of the ban
on child labor on the
carpet weaving industry in India, see Tully (2002, pp. 30–60).
2 A detailed classification of the workers in the informal
economy is available in Chaterjee
et al. (2002), and estimates of informal workers in developed
and developing countries is
available in ILO (2002).
352
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Journal of Industrial Relations

DOI: 10.1177/0022185608096806
2008; 50; 718 JIR
Alex de Ruyter and Tonia Warnecke
of the USA and Indonesia
Gender, Non-standard Work and Development Regimes: A
Comparison
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Gender, Non-standard Work and
Development Regimes: A Comparison of the
USA and Indonesia
Alex de Ruyter
University of Birmingham, UK
Tonia Warnecke
Rollins College, USA
Abstract:
Keywords:
a r t i c l e
Introduction: Globalization and Flexibility

Figure 1
1
Gender Regimes in Practice: A Comparison between the USA
and Indonesia
USA
2
3

4
Figure 2
P
e
rc
e
n
t
(%
)
Percentage of Employees with Part-Time Jobs
Year
5
Figure 3
P
e
rc
e
n

t
(%
)
Self-Employed Workers
1963 1965 1967 1969 1971 1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983
1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003
Year
Figure 4
2
P
e
rc
e
n
t
(%
)
Employees that are Contingent Workers

6
Indonesia
Figure 5
P
e
rc
e
n
t
(%
)
1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998

Year
wage & salary
earners (employees)
self-employed worker
with employees
own-account workers
contributing family
workers
Figure 6
1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998
Year
P
e
rc
e
n
t
(%
)

male
female
total
women employed
part-time
Conclusion
Figure 7
(%
o
f
w
o
rk
fo
rc
e
)
Year
Self-employed (own account

worker)
Self-employed assisted by
family member/temporary help
Employer
Employee
Unpaid worker
Casual employee in agriculture
Casual employee not in
agriculture
45.00
40.00
35.00
30.00
25.00
20.00
15.00
10.00
5.00
0.00
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

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!
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+
+
+ +
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+
Notes
References

What Would You Sacrifice? Access
to Top Management and the Work–
life Balance
Cécile Guillaume* and Sophie Pochic
This article is based on a current research, combining
quantitative (human
resources figures and statistics) and qualitative data (60
interviews with
career managers, top managers and high potential talents, both
men and
women), conducted in a major French utility company on the
subject

of diversity and more specifically on the issue of women’s
access to top
management positions. The main purpose of this research is to
understand
the difficulties women may encounter in the course of their
occupational
career linked to organizational aspects, including the ‘glass
ceiling’ pro-
cesses, informal norms related to management positions (such
as time and
mobility constraints) and social and cultural representations
attached to
leadership. The other perspective of this research focuses on the
different
strategies women and men build either to conform to the
organizational
norms or bypass them. The issue of work–life balance are
therefore
addressed both from a corporate/organizational standpoint and
an indi-
vidual and family perspective.
Keywords: managerial career, work–life balance, glass ceiling,
women in man-
agement, organization
The formal and informal requirements of
organizational careers
Even if a great amount has been written on organizational
careers since the1960s (Dalton, 1959; Glaser, 1968), these
studies have rarely focused on the
articulation between work and private life, as if it was possible
to separate
these two spheres of life. Conversely, women’s management
studies have

shown the importance of combining paid and unpaid work in the
analy-
sis of women’s difficulties in accessing power. Inspired by the
American
Address for correspondence: *Cécile Guillaume Lise-CNRS, 59
rue Pouchet 75017 Paris, e-mail:
[email protected]
Gender, Work and Organization. Vol. 16 No. 1 January 2009
doi:10.1111/j.1468-0432.2007.00354.x
© 2007 The Author(s)
Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
mailto:[email protected]
interactionist approach of ‘careers’ (Hughes, 1937) and the new
French soci-
ology of cadres1 (Bouffartigue, 2001a), we propose to focus
this article on the
forms and dynamics of managers’ careers in a French utility
company, with a
specific emphasis on work–life balance issues and the formal
and informal
requirements to access power.
In order to analyse occupational careers, Hughes (1937)
recommends
focusing on the ‘turning points’ of occupational mobility, the
circumstances of
choices and refusals, with a specific emphasis on the
organizational criteria
and actors of promotion. Studying medical careers, Hall (1948)
reveals that
a career can be conceived as a set of more or less successful

adjustments to
the formal and informal norms of medical institutions — stages,
rituals
and sponsorship system. Analysing an American industrial
company, Dalton
(1959) also stresses that the level of education or seniority has
less influence
on managerial careers than social origins and the membership of
social net-
works. More recently, Kanter (1977) has laid emphasis on the
impact of social
conformity, structure of opportunity and distribution of power
(mainly based
on alliances with powerful sponsors and peers’ support) in the
success of
corporate careers, also showing the gendered bias of
organizational struc-
tures and processes. Since then and following the major
contribution of Acker
and Van Houten (1974), many researchers have explored the
links between
gender, power and organizations showing that ‘gender
differences are
mobilised by organisational structures, rather than simply
imported from
elsewhere into an essentially neutral organisational arena’
(Halford and
Leonard, 2000, p. 44).
Following this line of research, we made the choice to analyse
the organi-
zational aspects of managerial careers in a large company,
focusing our
empirical survey on three main questions: What are the
organizational norms
required for accessing top management positions and their

effects on work–
life balance? What is the status of women? What are the
strategies invented by
men and women managers to conform to the prevailing career
model or to
promote alternative patterns?
Methodology: the embeddedness of organizational careers
We have chosen to make an in-depth case study in a large state
utility
company. This firm employs more than 30,000 people, is one of
the largest
French industrial firms and is quoted on the CAC 40. Since its
creation in
1946, the company has never experienced any major
restructuration. Apart
from outsourcing non-qualified activities and the recent
purchase of foreign
subsidiaries, the stability of the company has protected
qualified employees
from the uncertainty of mergers and acquisitions. The
deregulation of the
French energy market began only in 2004 under pressure from
the European
Commission and, despite repeated union opposition (Wieviorka,
1996), the
ACCESS TO TOP MANAGEMENT AND THE WORK–LIFE
BALANCE 15
© 2007 The Author(s) Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009

partial privatization of the firm was decided in 2005 and the
company is
now facing a very disputed merger project with another
European utility
company. These recent changes have not yet affected the
employment prac-
tices and career management rules. Job security is still
guaranteed and the
turnover of managers and professionals is very low (less than 1
per cent). The
structure of opportunity is quite typical of a bureaucratic career
pattern
(Glaser, 1968): consisting of a ‘closed internal labour market’
(Paradeise,
1984), linear and vertical career movements, long processes of
development
from entry-level management jobs to upper positions, with a
large number of
moves (and tests) in between, a wide range of normative
expectations (such
as social conformity and adhering to a prescribed set of roles)
and the
requirement of loyalty to the organization. However, this career
pattern is
biased by the particularities of the French education system.
The field of
opportunities is indeed clearly structured and limited by the
hierarchy of
diplomas. Access to the highest managerial positions (and
remunerations) is
reserved to the ‘Noblesse d’Etat’ (Bourdieu, 1989), coming
from the most
prestigious ‘grandes écoles’ (engineering or business).
This ‘cultural’ background and the relation to the French State
can partly

explain the permanence of this ‘old’ career management system.
However, in
Europe and the USA, a contradictory debate has emerged in the
1990s about
the end of internal labour markets and the emergence of a new
career model
based on flexibility, lateral and external mobility and individual
respon-
sibility and expertise for all managers and professionals. This
‘post-
entrepreneurial’ career (Kanter, 1989) or ‘portfolio’ career
(Handy, 1989) or
‘boundaryless’ career (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996) has been
identified as an
answer to contemporary business constraints and the ‘new spirit
of capital-
ism’ (Boltanski and Chiapello, 1999). However, empirical data
are very few or
limited to specific populations or professions. In France,
quantitative studies
point out that managers and professionals form a very
heterogeneous group,
and that external mobility depends on diploma, age, sector and
economic
circumstances (Bouffartigue and Pochic, 2002; Dany, 2004).
Uncertainty is
certainly growing for many employees, but managers (under 50
years old)
and high potential professionals are still protected from these
turbulences,
mainly because companies want to retain them (Falcoz, 2001;
Pochic, 2001).
From this perspective, the firm we are studying is representative
of an ‘old
model’ that persists in many large corporations (Wajcman and
Martin, 2001),

at least for a minority of privileged employees. Moreover, we
believe that,
despite the important shifts of emphasis that have affected
corporate jobs and
careers, the gender gap in large corporations can still be
analysed using the
same theoretical grid (opportunity, power, culture and
numbers).
Thus, in order to measure the ‘glass ceiling’ in this company
and to select
our interviews, we have begun our survey by a quantitative
analysis based on
the human resources (HR) information system. We were given
access to an
anonymous HR database of all the 9600 managers and
professionals of the
16 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009 © 2007 The Author(s)
company (covering all the qualified employees).2 This database
contained
socio-demographic variables as sex, age, diploma (level and
type) and family
situation (family status, spouse’s job, number of dependant
children). It also
detailed static occupational variables such as seniority, job
occupation, job
department, salary level, functional group (from GF12 to
GF193), full time or
part time, location. We managed to cross this database with two

pieces of
confidential information: the label, ‘high potential talent’ and
rank in the scale
of responsibilities for top management positions (R4 to R1).
We interviewed 60 men and women managers from January to
June 2005,
including 36 senior managers (20 women and 16 men aged from
39 to 58 years)
and 24 younger ‘high potential’ professionals and managers (20
women and
four men aged from 23 to 44 years). Since 1994, this ‘high
flyer’ label has been
attributed to young professionals or managers if they are
perceived as possible
future senior managers. This selection relies on a set of formal
and
informal procedures handled by the hierarchical line.4 Our
qualitative
sample is representative of the diversity of job department
(from finance
and sales to more technical ones, such as transport or research
and develop-
ment [R&D]), family situation (single/couple, with or without
children),
type of diploma (engineering, business administration,
university) and
location (Paris area or ‘province’). Interviews were taped and
analysed through
a thematic and a biographical grid (occupational, family and
residential). It was
thus possible to make a link between the way senior managers
(men and
women) have managed and perceived the work–life balance of
their own
career and the way they manage their subordinates along that

dimension.
A technical firm with a late feminization
One of the main results of the statistics analysis is the
demonstration of the
clear process of horizontal and vertical job segmentation that
affects women
in the company, underlining, like in many other studies, the
‘gendered take-
over, exclusion and occupational closure’ that is detrimental to
women and
beneficial to men (Witz, 1992).
The ‘glass ceiling’ permanence
If we look closely at the situation of women in the company, we
are bound to
acknowledge that the feminization of management roles has
considerably
risen in the last 15 years. Women count for 44 per cent of all
managers aged
35 or less, whereas only 15 per cent of managers aged over 45
are women, as
Table 1 shows. This disparity reveals the recent feminization of
a company
that used to hire and promote male engineers. However, if
women are catch-
ing up at the first levels of management, they almost disappear
when we look
at senior management positions. They are only 26 per cent in
this ‘tilted’
BALANCE 17

group, which makes them switch from the status of tokens to
that of a
minority (Kanter, 1977). The inflexion of the curve occurs from
GF17
onwards. This step coincides with the age of 35–40 years, when
family con-
straints become strong. It is also a key stage before entering
management
positions. From this point onwards, the glass ceiling becomes
very visible and
women account for only 10 per cent of top managers, accessing
these posi-
tions at the end of their career. Women seem to progress more
slowly than
men, experiencing repeated professional tests and challenges.
Their career
promotion is very progressive. They rarely skip one step of the
ladder, some-
times accepting horizontal mobility, unlike their male
colleagues who are
much more vigilant to the statutory aspects of their career
progression (it is
not rare for engineers having graduated from the best schools to
climb up the
ladder two grades at a time). Women access the first levels of
senior manage-
ment (R4–R3) later than men, except for a few engineers
coming from pres-
tigious schools who ‘had the right to career promotion’ like
their male
counterparts, or experienced women with rare expertise
(finance, marketing,

sales) and social credentials either coming from other
companies (and
Table 1: Feminization rate of executives, managers and
professionals
Wage and
responsibility
scale
Young
managers
(< 35 years) (%)
Mid-career
(35–44 years)
(%)
End of career
(> 45 years)
(%)
Total
(%) N
R1 4.0 3.8 26
R2 7.5 8.6 70
R3 21.4 7.2 8.9 224
R4 22.4 9.6 12.0 359
Executive 22.2 8.3 10.3 679
GF 19 16.7 11.4 12.6 380
GF 18 29.1 11.3 16.9 496
GF 17 34.7 16.4 24.3 687
GF 16 44.7 31.6 18.4 25.6 704
GF 15 40.7 35.0 16.0 27.5 1083

GF 14 46.0 27.6 16.9 27.0 1487
GF 13 45.1 29.2 13.6 28.8 2075
GF 12 42.7 23.9 16.5 26.1 2055
Manager and
professional
44.2 29.3 15.3 25.8 8967
N 1965 2732 4949 9646
Source: human resources database, November 2004.
entering the career ladder at the top) or having been mentored
by male senior
managers.
The glass walls: gendered corporate career paths
The glass ceiling is not only due to the late entry of women in
the company
and in the engineering schools, but is also linked to an obvious
process of
horizontal job segmentation. Women are concentrated in
traditional ‘velvet
ghettos’ (communication, finance, HR), as reveals Table 2, even
if, in the last
10 years, the company has hired women with sales and
marketing back-
grounds and women with high technical expertise (mostly linked

to R&D and
geo-sciences). However, this relative diversification of
women’s careers con-
firms the fact that women usually build their career in narrow
specialized
fields, avoiding managerial routes (Savage, 1992). As a matter
of fact, most of
them are concentrated at the headquarters in Paris. Very few
work in the
traditional core departments (energy trade, transportation and
distribution).
They are more visible in the sales and marketing departments
that are slowly
Table 2: Glass walls — horizontal segmentation of job
occupations
Occupational groups
Feminization
rate (%) (Percentage) N
Feminized job (women > 30 per cent)
Communication 58.1 1.9 172
Law professionals 44.6 1.6 148
Research 35.3 3.5 314
Accounting finances 34.6 7.9 705
Marketing 32.9 10.7 963
Male job (women < 30 per cent)
Human resources 29.5 16.6 1534
Data processing 24.3 14.9 1335
Sales and customer services 23.1 10.5 945
Hygiene and safety 22.8 5.2 469
Trade of energy 23.0 2.5 226
Exploration and production 21.7 0.8 69
Logistics 15.5 2.0 181

Infrastructure construction 11.9 4.0 360
Infrastructure management 11.2 7.4 648
Infrastructure conception 8.8 4.3 387
Total managers and professionals 25.8 100*
Note: * small occupations groups are missing.
BALANCE 19
gaining prestige over technical ones (and are therefore
becoming more mas-
culine). However, even in those quite feminine departments,
access of
women to top management remains difficult.
A masculine career pattern
When exploring the requirements for success, we can
distinguish three sorts
of promotion criteria — structural, cultural and organizational
— all of which
involve drawbacks for women.
Formal specifications for career promotion: the gender-
neutrality of
the organization
The reconstitution of senior managers’ careers reveals shared
and quite invio-

lable norms and patterns. As we have already pointed out,
senior managers
have graduated from the most prestigious French schools of
engineering and,
more recently, from famous French business schools. This
‘criterion of excel-
lence’ is very detrimental for professionals with university
degrees, as Table 3
shows. Even if the ability to meet objectives and results
becomes progres-
sively a key factor for promotion, it does not compensate for the
initial
educational handicap. Part of the existence of the glass ceiling
is related to
educational background and the social hierarchy between
diplomas for both
women and men (Bauer and Bertin-Mourot, 1987; Pochic,
2005). This qualifi-
cation criterion is in itself detrimental for women. They have
entered engi-
neering schools much later than men and are still much less
numerous,
accounting for only 25 per cent of all engineering students
(Marry, 2004).
However, since the mid 1980s the company has started to shift
from the
dominance of engineers to the recruitment of professionals with
commercial
and business backgrounds, offering more opportunities for
women.
Despite this initial technical specialization, senior managers
have accepted
a high level of functional and geographical mobility. For the
first 10 to 15
years of their career they have changed position (and most of

the time loca-
tion) every three or four years. Managers are not supposed to
build their
career in one site because they need to keep some distance from
the local
social context, showing their loyalty to the organization first. In
that internal
market, geographical mobility is often presented as the norm to
access top
executive positions. The majority of male executives have
accepted at least
one move in their career, in France or in a foreign subsidiary,
explaining how
risky it is to refuse this assignment. Once they have proved
their technical
abilities, engineers are supposed to be generalists able to hold
any kind of
managerial position — outside Paris and at the headquarters, in
technical or
functional departments — following the traditional engineers’
career patterns
(Bouffartigue, 2001b; Flamand, 2002). They are expected to
alternate between
staff and line positions, usually between the Paris area and the
provinces,
through a ‘spiralist’ career model (Pahl and Pahl, 1971). This
expectation of
polyvalence does not apply to non-engineer professionals who

are channelled
into expert occupations peripheral to central management. The
managerial
side of the career is quite detrimental for those who do not want
to experience
management positions (including engineers) or who are
confined to expertise
paths. Even external assessment has been built to favour
professionals who
fit the ‘technical managerial’ career pattern and demonstrate the
necessary
breadth of work experience, including key ‘hard’ functions,
confirming the
hierarchy of career paths and diplomas (Guillaume and Pochic,
2007).
Career progression patterns also involve a strong correlation
between age
and career ladder steps. Very high potential professionals must
be detected
before the age of 35 and they need to reach the first levels of
senior manage-
ment positions (ranked GF18–19) before they are 40. In our
sample, 186
persons have been labelled as having ‘potential’, with 35 per
cent of women
in the ‘high potential’ category and even 50 per cent of women
in the ‘very
high potential’ category (only 36 persons). As young
professionals are hired in
GF12 positions when they are 25 years’ old, they need to spend
less than three
years in each position to be able to reach level GF18–19 before
40. This rhythm
implies continuous involvement at work with no career breaks,
and organi-

zational awareness to avoid dead-end positions or
organizational hazards that
can slow down the career progression.
Last but not least, managerial careers are built around the
learning of time
availability, starting with ‘on call’ operational constraints and
continuing with
time-consuming responsibilities such as, ‘head of cabinet’. This
emphasis put
on self-sacrifice is linked to the inheritance of a cultural
conception of
working involvement that refers to the notions of a calling and
selflessness
(Saglio, 1999). Like in many other state occupations, employees
have chosen
to dedicate themselves to the service of the state (and the
nation) and are not
supposed to count their time. But, more generally, this time-
consuming
pattern reveals the importance of loyalty in corporate careers
and the organi-
zation’s demands for total devotion. All senior and high
potential managers
work full time and, despite the fact that the legal working time
is 35 hours a
week, most of them put in very long hours. As in many other
companies,
‘those employed on a part-time basis have little or no chance of
promotion to
management positions as these are specified as full-time’
(Brockbank and
Traves, 1996, p. 85), as shown in Table 3. If geographical
mobility require-
ments are less strong than before (except for new international
assignments),

time availability is getting stronger as the company is
progressively switching
from a bureaucratic and centralized type of organization to a
more decentral-
ized matrix-like model. Co-ordination meetings are proliferating
and add
to the norm of presence and the very French habit of endless
and informal
discussions. Overall, temporal norms associated either with
career progres-
sion or working hours are very prejudicial for women. An
intense working
BALANCE 21
involvement is required between the ages of 25 and 35 when
they are likely
to have children and family constraints. This typical
organizational career
pattern, linear and progressive, ignores individual life cycles
and implicitly
assumes that managers are male.
Table 3: Access to top management after 45 years old
Men Model M Women Model W
Diploma
Group 1. Prestigious ‘grandes

écoles’ engineering schools
business schools
50.0 ** 29.0 **
51.0 35.0
43.0 21.0
Group 2. Acknowledged schools
or Bac + 5
23.5 ref. 10.0 ref.
Group 3. Small schools or Bac + 4 14.0 ** 10.0 ns
Bac + 2 0.5 ** 0.0 ns
Baca or less 1.0 ** 0.0 **
Age 12.0 6.0
Between 45 and 54 10.0 ref. 6.0 ref.
More than 55 20.0 ** 8.0 ns
Locality
Paris region 17.5 ref. 9.0 ref
Provinces 7.0 ** 0.0 **
Working hours
Full time 13.0 ref. 8.0 ref.
Part time (<35 h) 0.5 ** 0.5 **
Family situation
Alone (single or divorced) 6.5 ns 5.0 ns
Company couple (with a company
employee)
11.0 ns 4.5 ns
Dual-earner couple (with an

external worker)
9.5 ref. 8.5 ref.
Breadwinner (with an inactive
spouse)
17.5 ** 0.0 ns
Number of dependent children
0 8.0 ref. 5.0 ref.
1 or 2 12.0 ns 5.5 ns
3 or more 18.0 * 16.0 ns
Notes: Significant level: **: p < 0.01 *: p < 0.10 ns: non
significant. N = 534 execu-
tives + 4370 managers and professionals. In France. secondary
school ends with
the Baccalauréat. aBac + 2 means a diploma obtained with 2
year of studies after it.
After the age of 45, on average, 12 per cent of men are in
executive; 50 per cent if
they have graduated from the most prestigious Grandes écoles.
This difference in
comparison to a Group 2 diploma (reference) is significant in a
logistic regression
model which controls the other variables.

Implicit requirements for career progression: the sacrifice of the
spouse’s career
The gendered foundations of career patterns also lie in the
promotion of a
specific type of family configuration — male breadwinner,
inactive wife and
numerous children (see Table 3). This company does not tend to
suppress
sexuality (Acker, 1990; Burrell, 1992) or domestic incursions
but actually
encourages a certain form of sexual and family life —
hetereosexuality and
marital status — even amongst employees. A certain number of
managers
have indeed met their spouse in the company or have remarried
another
employee after their divorce: 11 per cent are in a ‘company
couple’ (9 per cent
for men, 15 per cent for women; see Table 4).5 In this case, the
gendered
division of work in the family is reinforced by the subordination
of women at
work as they often hold lower positions than their husband.
Women are
clearly handicapped by the social representations attached to
sexual roles and
household division of labour. Women are mainly perceived as
housewives,
even if they are not. Sex roll spillover will affect women
regardless of the
sexuality or whether or not they have children, and stereotypical
attitudes
towards women predicated on women’s general lack of
commitment to work
because of their families is a powerful process structuring
gender hierarchies.

(Colgan and Ledwith, 1996, p. 34)
We can explain this emphasis on traditional division of sexual
roles by
referring to the organizational culture (Morgan, 1986) of the
company and
notably its paternalistic dimension. Beyond the underlying set
of values that
associate women with domestic life and men with public life,
gendered
relationships are embedded in a specific organizational culture
that is the
product of history:
During my recruitment test [in 1977], my manager said: OK, but
you both
(my husband and I) won’t be able to have a career, one of you
will have to
choose, and it will be you inevitably. It was a really hard speech
for a start
in the company! ... In the distribution department, the standard
is the
inactive wife or better the schoolteacher (who can ask for a
professional
transfer each time her husband is moving). Dinners with
managers are
ridiculous, with the wives talking about their husband’s career,
saying ‘We
had this position’ or ‘It’s outrageous, there is no curtain in his
new office.
(Woman, R3, 52, married, two children, graduate from a
prestigious engi-
neering high school).
Created after World War II by the state in a context of strong
union activism,

the company has developed an extensive internal social welfare
providing
pension schemes and medical expenses coverage for employees
and their
families. This paternalistic aspect of the company has been
reinforced by
the sociological characteristics of the managers recruited —
male engineers
with catholic backgrounds who had graduated from various
grandes écoles
BALANCE 23
T
ab
le
4:
Fa
m
ily
si
tu
at
io
n

ac
co
rd
in
g
to
jo
b
po
si
ti
on
(%
)
E
xe
cu
ti
ve
s
R
1–
R
4

H
ig
h
p
ot
en
ti
al
M
an
ag
er
s
an
d
p
ro
fe
ss
io
na
ls
To
ta

l
M
en
W
om
en
M
en
W
om
en
M
en
W
om
en
Si
n
gl
e
6.
5
30
.0

20
.5
33
.0
17
.0
29
.0
19
.0
C
om
pa
n
y
co
u
p
le
9.
0
16
.0
7.

0
11
.0
9.
0
15
.0
11
.0
D
ua
l-
ea
rn
er
co
u
p
le
39
.0
52
.0
59

.0
52
.0
50
.0
52
.0
50
.0
B
re
ad
w
in
n
er
45
.0
1.
0
14
.0
4.
0

24
.0
3.
0
20
.0
10
0.
0
10
0.
0
10
0.
0
10
0.
0
10
0.
0
10
0.
0

10
0.
0
N
56
2
63
.0
11
6
73
65
40
22
38
95
92
N
ot
e:
fr
eq
u

en
cy
m
is
si
n
g:
54
.
So
ur
ce
:
h
u
m
an
re
so
u
rc
es
d
at

ab
as
e,
N
ov
em
be
r
20
04
.
sometimes linked to the Army (notably the prestigious Ecole
Polytechnique).
Moreover, the company’s organizational culture is also closely
linked to tech-
nical and productive constraints. The distribution of energy
requires local
industrial sites, widely spread across the country. The company
needs to
provide for all local management positions, even in remote
places, while
organizing career development paths that include headquarters
activities in

Paris. This need for geographical and functional mobility,
associated with the
importance of institutional and social activities (taking part in
— and orga-
nizing — dinners and social events with local representatives
and economic
elites), implicitly requires a certain kind of family configuration
and a division
of roles in the family. Most executives’ spouses are therefore
inactive, acting
their role of ‘corporate wives’ (Kanter, 1977). When they work,
they are
confined to a narrow range of occupations with low pay and low
authority
and they end up quitting their job after their husband’s second
or third
professional transfer. In every case, male ‘successful
managerial careers are
associated with extensive domestic support at home ... in the
form of a wife’
(Wajcman, 1996, p. 619) and sometimes with social support in
their relations
with colleagues or clients (Pahl and Pahl, 1971; de Singly and
Chaland, 2002).
In any case, this model of a ‘two-person single career pattern’
(Papanek, 1973)
demands certain types of role performance from the wife which
benefit the
company without being rewarded or paid.
A masculine image of managers
Besides these informal norms of career, the difficulties of
women to access
senior management positions is also to be found in the qualities
and attributes
expected for fulfilling with justification the role of ‘chef de

centre’, that is,
plant manager (Guillaume and Pochic, 2007). Three types of
abilities have to
be gathered in one person. First of all, a good manager has to
demonstrate
technical abilities. Senior managers have spent the first 10 years
of their
career in technical and operational positions in the core
departments of
the company, dealing with energy production or distribution. So
access to a
higher level of management includes the preliminary ability to
demonstrate
technical skills and understand industrial processes, even if
only one-third of
the jobs actually require highly technical specifications.
Successful career paths also require leadership abilities and
experience
outside Paris, handling large teams of employees and
technicians (blue-
collars workers) in a difficult social context. Unions are very
powerful in local
sites and they have the ability to call for collective mobilization
and strike,
sometimes taking illegal action and using methods of
intimidation such as
confining managers or abusing them verbally or physically. Last
but not least,
managers have to show administrative ability. The very
bureaucratic nature of
the working environment linked both to the state’s proximity
but also to the
BALANCE 25

hazardous type of industrial production, places a strong
emphasis on rules
management.
If we can read images of masculinity in the dominant symbolism
such as
the idea of a ‘tough and forceful leader’ and the emphasis put
on charismatic
management style that contains an implicit exclusion of women
(Wajcman,
1998), other aspects are less visible than in other organizations.
For example,
aggressiveness, competition and meanness are not suitable for
gaining a
position of power in the company. However, women seem to be
penalized by
a socialization pattern that is quite distant from the
individualistic, strategic,
unemotional and analytic approach that fits the dominant
culture. Moreover,
if very few women mention sexism or sexual harassment, some
female
managers do not always feel at ease with the male dominant
forms of socia-
bility (including content and style of communication, humour
and jokes and
body language). As in many organizations, the status of women
is under-
mined by the numerical dominance of men and by the gendered
distribution

of power. Because of their numerical weight but also their
central role in
career promotion (Guillaume and Pochic, 2007), male managers
play an active
role in the reproduction of a masculine symbolic order. Women
are con-
strained by the need to deal with the dominant culture, which
means either
being trapped in ‘role encapsulation’ (fitting pre-existing
generalizations
about one’s category as a group), accepting isolation or
becoming insiders by
turning against their own social category (Kanter, 1977).
Women’ strategies to shape their career routes
With such gendered foundations of career patterns, women
executives often
recall their feeling of being atypical, particularly for the first
pioneers who
were a minority during the 1970s. To illuminate women’
difficulties in access-
ing top management, we have distinguished their strategies
towards two
main organizational norms related to the work–life balance:
geographical
mobility and extensive availability.
Facing the forced geographical mobility norm
A few women managers have accepted the norm of forced
geographical
mobility, more often when they were young, single and without
children.
During their studies, they have sometimes experienced national
or interna-
tional moves. Some of them had even lived these repeated

Journal of Human DevelopmentVol. 5, No. 3, November 2004.docx

Journal of Human DevelopmentVol. 5, No. 3, November 2004.docx

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