ABSTRACT
The sexual division of labor and its correlate, the public – private divide, has allocated to women secondary and subordinate roles in the economy, the polity, and various social institutions. Even where women have been long involved in economic activities – whether formal or informal, agricultural or industrial, household or market – gender ideology has placed a lower value on the work that women do. In parts of the world where seclusion of women or male guardianship have been norms, women’s entry into the labor force and their growing visibility in public places often have been met by conservative backlashes, intense national debates on women’s roles, and feminist activism. Globalization has only served to intensify such debates and reactions, because of the accelerated nature of the social changes it engenders. In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, for example, trade liberalization, Islamization, and demands for women’s participation and rights have occurred in tandem, and often in conflict with each other. As a result, the protection or expansion of women’s socio-economic rights confronts at least two barriers: aspects of economic globalization, in particular the growth of precarious employment with little or no social protection; and the persistence of a gender ideology that has rendered women marginal in trade unions, government bodies, and other influential societal organizations. Women’s collective action, therefore, has centered on the expansion of
women’s organizations, which engage in advocacy, lobbying, and coalition building to enhance women’s participation and rights. Though largely constituted by women of the elite social groups, women’s organizations in North Africa in particular evince a kind of social feminism that calls for the enhancement of social rights, as well as civil and political rights. Calls for legal and policy reform center on both family law and labor legislation, and to achieve these goals, women’s organizations have built coalitions with trade unions, human rights groups, and government agencies. Concepts of economic citizenship and of social rights have been elaborated
in a number of international conventions, as well as in historical and sociological studies. Following Alice Kessler-Harris (2001), I define economic
citizenship as the right to equal opportunity in employment and income or, as recommended by the International Labor Organization (ILO), as decent wages for decent work. Social rights, as defined by T.H. Marshall (1964), are part of the panoply of the rights of citizenship, and entail rights to education, employment, fair wages, trade unions, collective bargaining, and welfare. These concepts have been elaborated in the ILO’s core labor standards, as well as in the International Covenant on Economic, Cultural, and Social Rights (ICESCR). For women, economic citizenship and social rights are also defined in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and especially in the Beijing Platform for Action (BPA), as well as in the Charter of Rights of Working Women of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).2
