Women Trade Unionists Put Globalisation in the Dock IPS news reports appear daily in English, German, Finnish, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish. Low wages, part-time or temporary work, subcontracting and ''flexibilisation'' of labour rights are all effects of processes like the liberalisation of trade, financial crises and structural adjustment programmes which hit women workers hardest, the conference underlined. The profits of transnational corporations balloon as they dismiss female workers and adopt mechanisms for cutting wages, said Riche, who mentioned the telecoms company Bell Canada in her country as a classic example of that phenomenon.
Unemployment also has a female face.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, unemployment stands at 15.7 percent among women, compared to 10.9 percent among men. A similar difference is also seen in the industrialised world - 11.1 against 8.5 percent. Other problems faced by female workers are sexual harassment, violence, the ''glass ceiling'', marginalisation from policy- making, and lower wages for the same work. Rigoberta Menchu, a Guatemalan indigenous Nobel Peace prize- winner and a special guest at the conference, also criticised globalisation as ''a strategy of accumulation'' of wealth by rich countries. It is not in our hands, however, but in those of just a few families,'' she said.