ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the substantial body of research carried out between 1985 and 1995 on women's employment in multinational corporations (MNCs) worldwide. It shows that it is timely and important to reassess the topic of women's employment in multinational corporation networks because significant changes have taken place in the global economy and in MNC strategies in that 10-year period. Third World countries heavily burdened by international debt or interested in obtaining loans have been pressured by international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) into structural-adjustment programs (SAPs), which often involve production by MNCs for export as a way to raise revenue to repay the debt. Macroeconomic conditions in each area differed, affecting both the inflow of MNCs in labor-intensive industries and women's work. Women's work is a crucial resource in African food production, but women's participation in formal-sector employment is negligible compared to men's.
