Abstract
Neo-liberal economic globalisation is characterised by the removal of all trade barriers to international and domestic trade and commerce, the privatisation of all available services, resources and sectors of micro, meso and macroeconomy and unleashing of market forces for profit maximisation for capitalist expansion (Patel in Women and Structural Adjustment in India. Social Scientist, Delhi, 1994). This process has increased human, financial, economic and technological transactions and communications across countries and regions. Over the last three decades, the research studies have revealed that globalisation has accentuated inequality and poverty and has had a massive influence on the urban, rural and Dalit/tribal poor women as paid, underpaid and unpaid workers of the economy (Bakker and Silvey in Beyond states and markets: the challenges of social reproduction, Routledge, UK). As homemakers, the poor women have shouldered a disproportionate burden of commercialisation and marketisation of day-to-day survival needs such as drinking water and sanitation, degradation of environment and erosion of public health services and cash-controlled privatised education by corporate-driven economic policies (Acharya in Beyond states and markets: the challenges of social reproduction, Routledge, UK). Expensive transport and dismantling of the public distribution system that provided grains, cooking fuel, cloth material, soap, etc. have made the lives of millions of poor women full of hardship and labour intensive (Floro in Beyond states and markets: the challenges of social reproduction, Routledge, UK). International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) study on work participation of women in India has shown a massive fall in the work participation rate from 34% in 1999 to 27% in 2017 (Abraham, 2017). New robotic and automation technologies are further transforming global supply chains and production processes, putting at risk many jobs typically held by women (Bakker and Gill in Capital and Class, pp. 1–21, 2019).
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Patel, V. (2022). Macroeconomic Policies, Neo-liberal Economic Globalisation and Women in the Workforce. In: Patel, V., Mondal, N. (eds) Gendered Inequalities in Paid and Unpaid Work of Women in India. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9974-0_2
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