Women in Industry: North-South Connections

Peter Penz was Associate Professor, York University, Downsview, Ontario.

This short book looks at the relationship between employment conditions for women in a certain industrial sector in Canada and in Third World countries, respectively. In particular, it tackles the issue of social justice where Canadian industries that are major employers of women are threatened by Third World competitors that also employ women to a large extent. Both groups of women are relatively disadvantaged in their pay and working conditions. The book relies primarily on a review of the existing literature and of government programs, but it also offers a particular policy position.

It is presented as an institutional product, with various persons (especially Janette Mark, Margaret Biggs, Dana Peebles, and Maxwell Brem) being credited in the foreword for the research and writing of the different chapters. The North-South Institute is a Canadian non-profit research institute concerned with relations between industrialized and less-developed countries.

After providing a useful overview of recent patterns in industrial exports from Third World countries to the West, the book goes on to provide interesting insight into the social conditions of women in those exporting industries. It then turns to the same industries in Canada and, extensively using statistics, shows how disadvantaged the workers, and in particular women, in those industries are. Next it describes and, to a limited extent, evaluates Canadian government policy, both on import control and on adjustment assistance. Finally, it reviews some proposals for government intervention, rejecting protectionism as well as trade sanctions against countries with exploitative working conditions. Instead, it comes out in favour of an open-door policy combined with adjustment assistance for those displaced by the new competition and pressures exerted through international bodies to improve the conditions of workers in the Third World export sector.

While I found much of the factual material presented interesting, it seemed to me that in its policy evaluation it did not go deep enough. First of all, in its evaluation of Canadian policy toward firms and workers vulnerable to foreign competition, it does not explore economic planning options other than import control and adjustment assistance. Secondly and more fundamentally, its assessment of equity is not based on explicit, general principles that would give the assessment more than a vague intuitive appeal. Such principles would require reference to a just world order in general; equity cannot be assessed within the confines of a particular industrial sector, especially when the terms of reference cut across national boundaries.

What the book does do effectively is to describe the situation, bring out the dilemma and indicate the issues discussed within the mainstream of policy thinking.