Seminar Series: Abstract

1:00
March 30 2009
Seminar Room C

Gender Development Consequences of Business Globalization
Janet Spitz

Visiting Associate Professor of International Business, University of Queensland

Cultural malleability from increased global economic activity creates an influence opportunity for Business’ ideological preferences for inequality and patriarchy. Developing nations represent very little of the world’s wealth at this time, compared to corporations. Among the bottom 95% of the world’s national and corporate economies, developing nations hold only some 8 percent of the wealth, leaving them particularly vulnerable to preferences held by the dominant group. As a result, accomplishments of women in developing regions, individually and in the aggregate, are likely to experience both cultural and economic bounds: widening gender pay gaps are one manifestation. Explicit language in trade agreements and other governance documents elucidating gender and other equality is suggested to be worth actively seeking as a mechanism to limit gender discrimination and enable developing nation empowerment of women, as of all people.