ABSTRACT
This chapter describes indirect impact on workers via its effects on governments. The location decisions of corporations punish governments who defend public expenditure against neoliberal principles of fiscal rectitude. The marketization inherent in globalization is characterized by pillage of the public: privatization and corporatization of remaining public companies; and cuts to public services such as health, education and welfare. Marketization is supervised by the usual suspects: the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF and at regional levels by institutions such as the European Central Bank. Marketization imposes particular hardships on women when cutbacks in public services place additional demands on those most likely to replace those services 'voluntarily'. Public opinion surveys indicate time and again that neoliberal policies lack majority support, yet major parties prefer to maintain the confidence of the markets than of the people. Privatization of public wealth has increased the ratio of private capital to national income in the past four decades.
