Yıldız Ecevit

Poverty in general and specifically women’s poverty is an issue that has to hold an important place in our agenda. In parallel with the increasing unfair distribution of income and welfare society’s coming to the edge of collapsing, poverty deepening and becoming widespread across the world stands before us as one of the concrete examples of globalization. There is no doubt poverty is a global problem. However, while developed countries escape this problem with light scrapes, the Third World Countries heavily experience it. Because aforesaid countries are negatively affected by global economic developments.

Globalization and Global Economic Developments

Capitalist system is in a new phase which is called global capitalism today. We are faced with a formation which makes the world economy a whole, becomes international embodying social, political and cultural arenas at first and whose transnational tendencies get strong. We could define globalization in general as a concept which recounts the processes leading to global economic integration. The concept with its economic dimension embodies in itself characteristics such as “clarity/transparency” and “liberalization”, “integration” and “dependence upon each other”. Thereby what is meant is a drift to a world economy that can be described by free trade, free circulation of financial and real capital, enterprises move to countries where labor costs are lower and tax reductions are more convenient, fast dissemination of technology, information and consumation patterns. Production and profit, capital movements and technology are broadened across the world by multinational corporations, and these corporations dominate all economy. Globalization is placed on a international integration and expansion axis never seen before in terms of finance; nation states have begun to significantly lose their power to support and shape economic development. To a large extent national governments build their economic policies as according to the direction of international associations which administer globalization, and they have difficulty in controlling their own finance market.

An important factor in the liberalization of international capital is structural adjustment and stabilization policies. These policies which came up to abolish the arrangements in finance markets in the U.S, U.K and were later “imposed” on many Third World countries. Structural adjustment policies centered on the command of market forces and envisaged weakening the state’s intervention ability by diminishing it, elimination of public services, attenuation of social expenditures. Alongside the neoliberal ideology, in order to enable the continuity of free market dominance rules had to be destroyed, labor markets be ruined and thus worker organizations had to be weakened when accessing cheap labor. So did it come about.

Another process parallel to the financial globalization is production becoming flexible and international. Western countries rung the changes in the technical and social organization of production to overcome the crisis the capitalist mass production went through in the 1970s. Post-Fordist production system came into focus as a new production phase orienting in coping with the increasing competition among countries, adapting to narrowing markets, answering variable demands and devaluing labor. Unorganized workforce willing to accept atypical [part-time, temporary or seasonal work, telecommuting (work at home) etc] kinds of labor, which has become unqualified and forced to work with low payments has taken the place of organized workforce of the 1970s who are subject to regular work hours, whose payments are pre-determined and whose rights are protected by labor unions. Flexibility has also brought new kinds of exploitation. Apart from the nuclear worker staff firms now had a large reserve of workers whom they employed when they wanted and whom they sent home when they didn’t. Workers of subcontracter firms connected to big companies by subcontracts started to work with very low payments, temporarily and without insurance. It became easier for the capital to exploit these workers who cannot stand against the extension of work hours, bargain payment and who are dismissed in the face of narrowing market demand. Flexibility has deeply affected the labor unions as well. Syndicate organization of the workers weakened who faced dismissal; a contraction came about in the scope and content of collective agreements and mass unionism substantially regressed.

Countries adopting structural adjustment policies could not make the necessary local investments for a strong and determined expansion when they had to transfer their resources to developed countries due to external loans and interests. Production volume and thus incomes decreased. While valuable local resources remained idle, there was significant decline in the standard of living of most of the population. The main reasons for the decline in the standard of living were increasing unemployment, diminution in real wages, sale of the most necessary goods at very high prices and limitations in public services. Perhaps the most important of all was the restricting investment in human resources. The poor, women and children were the social sectors that felt the negative effects of this policy the most.

Today the source of poverty on earth is the neoliberal policies appearing at the background of globalizing processes. The strategies presented under the heading “development” and “reducing poverty” in the Third World countries are nothing besides things done to alleviate the deficiencies of these policies. Acccordingly, it is clear that we as women have the responsibility to stand against both the negative social results of these policies in general and the role they play in increasing women’s poverty.

How Did/Does Globalization and Structural Adjustment Policies Affect Women?

The negative impacts globalization, liberalization of trade and market, privatization and structural adjustment programs have on women are multi-faceted. This process increased women’s existence in labor market on three planes. Firstly, women provided power for competition for the export-oriented economies and especially for the labor-intensive manufacture industry in Asian, Central American and East European countries as cheap, easy-to-direct, flexible and unorganized workers. Secondly, constituting the majority of part-time workers, home-centered workers doing piecework, self-employed workers wthin the informal sector, or small interpreneurs supported by micro credits, women became the precursors of the new forms of labor. Lastly, in countries where sources of income shrunk with the effect of structural adjustment policies, international labor emigration increased as never before; emigration “feminized”. Today women of Far Asian countries work in countries such as the U.S and Canada -the ends of the world for them- in low-paying jobs especially in the service sector of cities. Women from North Africa and South America look for jobs in the labor markets of Europe. Women from Russia, East Europe and Euroasia try to stand against poverty by elderly, sick and kid-care.

Women played a significant role in the reduction of labor costs and deregulation of labor market in all the three sectors. Though they attained new rights with work legislations they could not make use of them. The informal sector jobs they worked for, flexible employment forms and work without contract left them outside of legal protection. Perhaps the number of women involved in paid employment increased as the defenders of globalization claim, yet this increase could not prevent them from their concentrating on low-paying and risky jobs and becoming marginalized. Privatizations caused dismissals.

Financial problems of countries resulted in the diminuation of protection and service in social security and welfare areas, curtailment of budget and substitution of these problems especiallly by women. Women of poor households tried to compensate for the lost income spending more labor at home and economising. As the social welfare services collapsed and governments got over these services women came to carry the burden of caring for the sick, the elderly and children more and more. Women’s labor at home intensified.

Why is a Feminist “Strategy for Struggle Against Poverty” Necessary?

International foundations take the lead in seeking “superficial” solutions for the problem of globalized poverty. World Bank and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Health Organization (WHO), Food Agriculture Organization (FAO) and programs of these organizations carry out projects based on struggle against poverty, aiming at developing education, basic health services, income-generating activities and small and large scale enterprises, supporting women’s participation in development process. Micro finance programs are of the most common examples. When we conceptualize of these programs’ goals as directly affecting poor individuals’ abilities, we could say they make compatible interventions aiming at developing “human capital” and “social capital” which neoliberal developmentalist discourse mostly uses. Pursuing the goal of developing human capital it is envisaged that individuals can withstand the negativities poverty begets, and that they can do this by means of increasing their personal capacities. And social capital refers to the solidarity and aid networks in individuals’ private areas and traditional relations are recommended that are based on family members, relatives, friends and neighbors and even ethnical communities in order to withtand poverty.

As can be noticed at first sight improvement of both human capital and social capital are related to the reconstructing of social space and the extension of private space. It is explicit that state and interventions in public space do not have an important place in the discourse of struggling against poverty. State that cannot go beyond transferring the duty to develop human and social capital to non-governmental organizations and which is contented with preparing the circumstances under which they operate tries to find solutions to the urgent necessities of the poor via the funds and private aids without forming long-running policies. Many examples of this approach could be pointed out in Turkey. Programs carried out by the Social Solidarity and Cooperation Head Office for years and things done as part of the Social Risk Reduction Project could be signalized as activities that need to be severely criticized with a feminist point of view in this context.

Almost all of the projects presented under the heading struggle against poverty are strategies that accept economic and political crises as if they were natural disasters and try only to alleviate their negative impacts upon the poor in the short run ignoring the basic problems causing poverty, therefore taking the new liberal ideology, structural adjustment policies and wage gaps as given without any questioning. Though World Bank named its 2000-2001 report “Attack on Poverty” clearly this attack is not on causes of poverty and globalization but only poverty’s manifestations. Morever it is stressed by many researchers that poverty is not alleviated via the investments the World Bank provides and that resources provided for education and human capital do not achieve the intented outcome in the struggle against poverty. Those criticizing banks’ policies say that aid and loans given to developing countries are directed at overcoming debt crises and temporarily attaining macro economic stability rather than struggling against poverty. It is impossible not to agree with this statement keeping in mind it is the World Bank who subjects the Third World countries to the condition that macro economic policies be applied for delay and renegotiation of external loans and millions of people become impoverished due to these policies.

What Should be Done to Form the Feminist Strategy of the Struggle Against Poverty?

Amargi is a journal for both theory and politics. Therefore we need to have a critical eye upon the things done for the struggle against poverty in Turkey, understand what they mean for women and discuss with what kind of an opposition we should answer them. Explicitly, it is time for women to form a “feminist strategy for the struggle against poverty” in Turkey. This strategy will gain importance so long as it is an alternative to the strategies so far applied to in Turkey.

Before anything, structures and processes causing poverty should be criticized for such a strategy. Yet it is not enough only to criticize economy politics and to say political parties do not have a policy to alleviate poverty apart from a rough populism. It is also not enough to bring to light the impoverishing impacts of economy policies. This kind of criticism is made by many circles that are against neoliberalism. The dilemmas of the neoliberal system are tried to be displayed by left-wing politicians, academicians, unions and some non-governmental organizations.

Then what should be the things to be said by feminists besides them? What should be said and how so that it embodies feminist theory, ideology and politics? For me the most important difference of this feminist strategy will be considering poverty from a feminist perspective. Such a perspective should include as a concern of feminist politics that negativities should be multiplied by two when it comes to women, women’s inequal position, patriarchy and class-based discrimination against women. It is extremely difficult to form such a strategy before understanding how women get “impoverished”, in which areas they are mostly struck and weakened by poverty. And this kind of attempt at understanding is almost impossible without establishing an integrity of feminist theory and methodology. Here at this point the habit of “reading poverty from outside” should be abandoned and be replaced by “reading poverty from inside”. Reading poverty from outside focuses on household and the decline in household’s income, ignores the gender-based inequalities within the household and makes it difficult to understand the specifity of women’s poverty. Whereas reading poverty from inside enables us to to see that poverty is a complicated process, understand why women carry the risk of getting unemployed more, discover depending on what they get the power to struggle against poverty from and where they seek outlets. None of these is information that could be attained by reading poverty from outside. Lately attempts at reading from inside giving an ear to life stories of women by Filiz Kardam, İlknur Yüksel, Aksu Bora, Süheyla Türkyılmaz, Pınar Uyan, Aynur Özuğurlu and Fadime Güneş have enabled us to collect feminist information of poverty.

A feminist strategy will be the outcome of a feminist investigation. Though the focal point for those who will carry out this investigation about the feminist criticism of poverty in Turkey will be to understand the specifities of women’s poverty, it should not be confined only to women. A feminist perspective should react against the inequality among social classes and impoverishing, force the state to take sides with weak in distribution relations. It should be binding on the state about being in collaboration with non-governmental organizaitons and especially women’s organizations about calling out the compensatory mechanisms. Methods applied by governments hoping for help about the struggle against poverty from international organizations which have the control result in a top-to-bottom intervention, and so objectify the poor. A feminist strategy opposing to this approach should recommend a bottom-to-top struggle. However, for such a struggle cannot be carried out by poor women individually, organized women should have critical stand, common approaches they would generate taking differences into account, and suggestions. Yet we notice that women’s organizations present so far have not gone beyond being the bearers of the solutions adopted by governments in parallel with the strategies advised by international organizations. That is, women’s organizations except some of them have not been able to develop a feminist criticism for the struggle against poverty and carry their thought to larger platforms where poverty is discussed.

When it comes to the issue by whom a feminist struggle against poverty will be carried out, the most ideal case would be that this struggle is conducted in an area including all the women harmed by poverty. Moreover, keeping in mind organized women’s groups could be more effective using their power deriving from organization we could place women’s organizations which do not fall into the trap of the projects carried out by the state under the name of struggle against poverty, union member women and initiatives founded by women working home-based at the top of the list. We need the well-rounded criticism against neoliberal global tendencies and impoverishing that would be made by these groups more than ever.

There would be people among us suspecting if such a critical view would be developed by these organizations and groups. In truth, it is known by all of us women’s organizations which have aimed at doing feminist politics are relatively fewer and weaker among the women’s non-governmental organizations at hand and that they have behaved timidly about bringing forth such a well-rounded feminist criticism so far. In an environment where unionist organization has weakened, waiting a strong opposition against globalization from union member women would be to overburden them. Home-based women who have met this kind of work after their household got impoverished and who frown upon their labor’s being exploited could also be speakers of an important feminist criticism and the struggle against poverty, yet their experience in political struggles and power are also limited.

Feminist opposition has another difficulty and this is about interlocutors. The longest running struggle in Turkey carried out by feminists was the one against violence. Violence has taken its place first in women’s and then the state’s agenda in more than twenty years. So much so that a research commitee inside the parliament was established to investigate the reasons for custom and honor murders, and violence against women and children. Afterwards a prime ministry notice was published. Municipalities with a polulation more than five thousand were authorized to open women’s shelter by the New Local Governments Act. The state has been carrying out two large-scale violence projects and alongside international organizations taking a role in projects aimed at those exposed to violence. In short the state seems to be putting the struggle against domestic violence on the agenda.

It would be simple-mindedness to expect the state to give an ear to a feminist opposition in the context of poverty as as it concerning the issue of violence. In state’s discourse the villain of violence is an abstract male dominance and more concretely, customs and traditions. Only rasping a little, the state has easily imported this discourse from the feminist movement because this discourse embodies a direct criticism neither on the capital nor the state in itself. However, the feminist criticism of poverty will be the criticism of the system, economic policies, the state allowing and applying these policies, the collapse of welfare services and distribution relations. Therefore feminists should expect from neither media nor the state a similar reaction about poverty as they displayed about violence. More importantly, the patronage relations established since 1995 by financial aids or giving food, clothing or fuel to the poor first by Refah Party municipalities and then making use of AKP’s power facilities as part of solidarity and support have made the masses who are the true subjects of impoverishing passive and drew them away from being the groups along with whom feminists would make opposition. Consequently today a basic assignation and question is on the nail: Though started with the groups mentioned above, a feminist struggle against poverty should definitely find its supporters. If the representatives of the feminist struggle against poverty are unable to act together with the poor who welcome power facilities answering to their urgent needs though in the short run, who could they cooperate with?

I think both making the feminist criticism of poverty and developing strategies grounding on this criticism, it would be appropriate to take all social classes and categories that get by their labor (not only paid workers but unpaid family workers doing subsistence production, housewives, the unemployed, those working in marginal jobs and all the categories getting by their labor) into account and think of this discourse as a processs all the laboring groups could find themselves within. Feminist discourse seems to have kept its labor-based criticism in the background and forgot the central importance of production and reproduction concepts in feminist analysis. A poverty criticism done ignoring the production and reproduction integrity will not have the quality of being a well-rounded critism sa long as it neglects the impoverishing processes emerging in these two areas.

Feminist women in Turkey emphasizing the necessity of criticizing the impoverishing processes could feel themselves alone thinking that such a critical climate has weakened not only about the issue of poverty but also many various issues. Therefore we should ask ourselves what could be the concrete bases of such a feeling and try to analyze the point feminism in Turkey is today in a way that includes the question “could there be a feminist strategy against poverty?”. Though I cannot develop this analysis as it would surpass the borders of this essay’s subject I cannot keep myself from underlining these points:

• Feminism in Turkey should gain its independence again. I think that the state, capital, international organizations and civil society are able to bore a hole in our laboriously established tradition of feminist criticism.

• As we draw further apart from the founders of the feminist theory our feminisms lose power and we begin not to take heed of our most necessary means to make feminist politics.
• Our feminist discourse become apoliticized; its political specifity and quality weaken. This discourse needs again and quickly to be politicized.
• The capacity of the feminist movement to analyze social processes, form suggestions for solutions and intrefere has also weakened. I think this intervention is multipartite, fragile and timid today. We should strenghten this capacity again.
• I also think that we have remained Turkey-based. We should follow other countries’ feminist movements closer and combine them with our policies.

From Amargi- Issue 6