Women in the Global South are disrupting the very system that marginalized them

Across the developing world, indigenous people’s lives are disrupted by the global market economy, which distorts their local markets with exchange value that can be achieved only through imports and exports. They also lose access to their land, due to ecological or political displacement, which removes their ability to be self-reliant, thus forcing them into the informal economy (particularly into wage labor). This is particularly true for women, who can find themselves relegated to the back alleys of an urban workforce devoted to the export-oriented textile and garment industry. Stephanie Seguino (2000) writes that, “Standing (1989, 1999) notes that in recent years, competitive pressures resulting from globalization (i.e. greater economic openness) have induced employers to substitute female workers for male workers, resulting in a feminization of the labor force.”

For instance, in both Nepal and Zambia, social, economic, and political factors have conspired to put women in tremendously difficult circumstances. Displacement is a key common prompt, whether due to conflict or because of economic projects, which forces them to migrate to densely populated urban centers in search of employment. Lack of education and cultural biases are also a factor, pushing them into textile work. When these jobs disappear, they are left with no support in the cities, no homes to which to return in the country, and environments that have been degraded along the way. Their lives, along with the countries in which they live, are anything but sustainable.

The social, economic, and environmental implications for women employed in the export-oriented textile industry are many, and they are almost consistently negative. The meager benefits of wages are grossly outweighed by the loss of home and support, which is only made worse when the loss of the jobs themselves leaves women destitute. None of these impacts are necessary, but rather the outcomes of war, economic development decisions, and the crushing burden of structural adjustment. Women are the tools when the system works, however imperfect and impermanent, and then its victims when the system fails.

There are alternatives, however, called “cooperatives,” which are often described as “an indigenous response to neoliberalism” (Stephen 2005). Essentially, a cooperative is controlled by its members, rather than by some outside power. In a way, it is a peasant rebellion, not in the sense of a violent conflict, but rather in challenging the political orthodoxy that has marginalized them. Worldwide, the cooperative sector has approximately 800 million members in over 100 countries, as tracked through an organization called the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA).

Textile cooperatives are a sustainable and beneficial response to both the displacement of women workers into the workforce, and to the impacts of both trade liberalization and structural adjustment that have followed thereafter. Cooperatives represent a marked improvement in the ecological sphere too, in that they can be conducted in rural areas, not urban, and do not require the extensive machinery of factories to produce such high numbers at low-cost (and members are empowered to make decisions to protect the ecosystems in which they live).

Perhaps most importantly, cooperatives allow women to be individuals, giving voice to their needs and interests instead of reducing them to anonymous cogs in a vast industrial machine. Cooperatives can’t undo all of the damage and effects wrought in developing countries, but they can mitigate them and, in many instances, inoculate communities from them.

This proves that when women can speak and act as a community, they can make much more than money; they can make decisions that ensure that their community will continue. That is the very definition of sustainability.

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