Modernization and Women - Essay Example

Running header: Modernization and women Student’s name: Instructor’s name: Subject code: Date of submission: Modernization and Women Economic development in developing countries has affected women in a number of ways. This includes both negative and positive impacts. Women are affected by economic development depending on their age, class, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, education and race among other factors. For instance, middle class women in China have benefited through new technologies, increased purchasing power and better employment opportunities. However, majority of women in developing countries tend to be worse off with the increase in economic growth and development. Adjustments in structural programs for instance have forced the government to cut back on food and health care subsidies. This becomes very expensive for women and their families and they may not afford. Free trade policies that require more food to be produced for export rather than domestic use threaten food security. It becomes hard to afford and they have to buy food at exorbitant prices for their families. Poor quality food is often what they may afford as the best quality is for export or those who can afford it. Other means of generating more food for instance genetically modified foods may not always be safe for human consumption and although its effects may be minimal at first, continuous intake of such foods may eventually cause cancer and other health complications. (David2009) Moreover, privatization of public health care that come with economic growth and development as well as globalization render such services to be in accessible to women of the lower social status. Primary health care is very crucial to the population and if it’s not adhered to, diseases such as malaria, measles. Neonatal tetanus. Polio, leprosy and tuberculosis may be extremely difficult to curb. Such cases if not treated early will lead to permanent disability among the little ones and sometimes will result to death among the children. Later in life, such children are faced with difficulty in leading normal lives. Their performance in school is also adversely affected. Their parents, especially their mothers tend to spend so much time taking care of them and may not be able to meet the family needs. In severe extents, they end up in the streets begging since they have to feed irrespective of their poor condition. Lack of such health care will result into high infant mortality rates and the rate of still births among women. Women experience complications during pregnancy and child birth. (Abram 2007)There are inadequate facilities to help such women and those available are beyond their means in such countries. They therefore have to cope with the harsh experiences as they may not afford high quality care because it is beyond their reach. Women tend to involve themselves in illegal activities such as human and sex trafficking. Sex trafficking may be ii many forms. It mostly targets young and helpless females of a render age. Most women are given false promises regarding their future prospects and expectations. However, they end up being forced into prostitution and other old jobs contrary to the jobs they had being previously promised. They experience very hard working conditions with little freedom thus they may not leave at will. They are often faced with violence or threat to violence. (Peter 2010)Their countries of origin, especially those with corrupt officers will not come to their aid when they need help. They tend to be treated as outcasts and are not entitled to their personal freedom. Thousand of women go missing every year as they seek jobs far away from their families and the larger community. These may at times make them feel out of place as they are far away from their homes with little or no protection. They may engage in activities such as drug trafficking and prostitution. Unfortunate women may end up in jail and serve long sentences if they are caught in drug trafficking. Their families and children will be left to suffer and take care of themselves. Women who engage in prostitution may end up being infected with sexually transmitted diseases and HIV and AIDs. These will result to deaths and strained economic status as the drugs required to keep them alive will be beyond their reach. These will result to their families breaking up and a further spread of such diseases. (Peter 2010) This further result to an increase in street families and children growing up as orphans. They are not able to access education and thus the situation keeps worsening. While the effects of economic growth will mostly be felt among the men in the developing countries, women are left to carry on their traditional roles in the developing countries. Female deprivation is very severe in most developing countries with high levels of poverty and national income; this is also the norm in most affluent nations as women also suffer low status due to conservative attitudes among the people. These women are seen to take traditional roles such as feeding their families and taking care of the homesteads. They are not expected to engage in professional or wealth creation activities which are mostly considered as the man’s role. Therefore, even if there is wide spread economic growth and development, it may not be felt among such women. Women who raise up to take other roles may be considered as arrogant and disrespectful to their husbands while in fact such activities would be wealth generating and would improve their standards of living. Men often feel inferior is such countries if women provide for their families or if they are making more money than them. Therefore, even if such women are hardworking and innovative, they would like to retain their role or place in the society and they will therefore be afraid to climb up the social ladder. (Joseph, 2010) Institutions such as banks do not encourage women empowerment and will for instance require their husbands to take a loan on their behalf. Others require their husbands to be guarantors which they may not welcome as they tend to be risk averse. Other financial institutions will require collateral that the women may not have. Therefore, such women are not able to benefit from economic growth and development. Although education among women has increased in the 21st century in the developing countries, there is still a great number of women who have no access to formal education. These engage in businesses that have little margins such as basketry, pottery and small scale agriculture. With economic growth and development, the raw materials used to produce such items often have inflated prices and therefore their margins are cut down thus their inability to expand or start new ventures. They lack of international markets where their products can fetch higher prices. This encourages middle men who reap all the gains. Innovations of such women are in some instances stolen and registered in other developed countries. However, women are now joining hands to form small groups that are registered and the governments in the respective countries give them subsidies or help them to come up with international markets. Emergences of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are also giving aid to such groups in order to sustain their operations. Although on average the standards of living among women are expected to rise, the disparity/gap among the poor and the rich keeps widening. This increases the relative among the women. This also increases the gap between different regions. The poor women therefore tend to work for the wealthy ones for very little pay which they spend in feeding their families and taking care of basic expenses. They have little to save and invest or even give quality education to their children. They therefore continue to be poorer while the rich get richer. Such poor women tend to spend their days doing one job after another in order to maximize on their income. The benefits of national growth are not evenly distributed. An increase in the GDP will not always be reflected by a reduction in relative poverty. Relative poverty refers to the disparity between the rich and the very poor in a given state. Countries in the developing countries have a high Gini co efficient. (Joseph, 2010) This is a co-efficient that measures the level of relative poverty. If it higher than one, it implies that the relative poverty in the country is very high. This reflects a very high disparity between the richest and the poorest people in the overall population. The poor in most cases use the little they earn to get through their day to day life. On the other hand, the rich are able to save and invest. They therefore increase their wealth as compared o the poor who have nothing or little to save. Economic growth and development will result to consumerism in the society. The market is able to create needs which it is willing to satisfy. Women in most developing countries are therefore forced to adhere to such needs and end up spending more money than they had budgeted for. This cuts back on their savings and they have little to invest. Therefore, although economic development in the developing countries has tended to make women’s lives better it has also brought some disadvantages as discussed above. Modernization refers to the transition from the traditional way of life to a modern society as the one found today in the western world. Modernization theory also known as development theory assumes that by introducing modern ways of technology, agricultural production for business as well as industrialization that is dependent on mobile labor force, the less developed countries would experience a growth in their economies. Modernization has had a number of impacts on women. One of such impacts is awakening the women’s consciousness. The rapid economic development resulting from modernization as well as the advent of women’s movement, the changing status of women has received a lot of attention globally. The role of women has also greatly changed from submissive, childbearing as well as dependent traditional women calling for equal rights of its strongest influences was the awakening of a woman's consciousness. With rapid economic development and the advent of the women's movement, the changing status of women received much attention around the world. The role of women began to change from the submissive, dependent and the childbearing traditional woman to the modern woman demanding for equal rights, sovereignty, and independence assuming the equally heavy career responsibilities. This essay attempts to examine how modernization has affected women of differing social status in distinct ways with special reference to China. Positive impacts of modernization on Chinese women One of the greatest positive impacts of modernization can be argued to be the end of an oppressive regime. Some of the oppressive Chinese traditions against women included that of foot binding. Foot binding is an act that involved breaking of the ark of a woman’s feet and wrapping the toes up against the foot thus creating a smaller looking feet with an acute ark. The barbaric act was seen as making the woman more attractive and arousing to men. The practice was passed down as a prerequisite for marriage from mothers to daughters across generations. However, with modernization and the coming to power of the communist party in 1949, the practice has been banned thus greatly alleviating the suffering of Chinese women. Modernization has also led to the abandonment of trafficking of women tradition. This is an act where women were sold through gangs of women traffickers who kidnapped and transported young women as well as girls across large distances from their homes while their papers and documentations were taken from them. (William, 2009) The women were purchased by men who barred them from leaving until they had had children and got committed to them. However, with modernization and increased awareness of human rights as well as the rights of women, the tradition has been abandoned. In fact, the act is legally banned and men who purchase women are jailed while people convicted of women trafficking are executed. These are just some of the oppressive traditions that have been abandoned not only in china but globally as a whole. Modernization has therefore greatly alleviated both physical and mental suffering that women went through. Women and men now live together in a civilized society in china. Education is one of the most influential ways of transforming individuals from traditionalism towards achieving modernity. According to Inkeles, the amount of formal education achieved by an individual is the single most valuable variable in determining his level of modernity. (Pateros,2003) The level and extent of a person’s education in any society greatly determines the degree of participation in the country’s economy. In china, education was seen as the most significant variable in providing women with access to a wider variety of roles repertoires as well as the opportunity for active participation in the Chinese economy. Thus with modernization, Chinese women as well as women from other areas of the world have been able to access formal education. This is unlike in the past when education was a reserve for men. In turn, educations has made these women more aware of their rights and have also been able to get formal employment. Another impact of modernization on Chinese women that is closely related to education is their ability to access modern jobs. (Pateros, 2003) Traditionally, Chinese women mainly used to work in farms. They were the backbone of the Chinese agricultural sector. Women were also supposed to stay at home and do odd jobs such as sewing and laundry work. They were also supposed to bear and bring up sons who were supposed to continue the family lineage. In other words, formal jobs were a preserve for men. However with the introduction of formal education through modernization, the situation has greatly changed. Women are now able to take up formal employment in the numerous Chinese industries where they earn a living. In fact, some of the women have been able to own big factories and even employ men thanks to modernization. Today, women provide a high percentage of all industrial labor required in Chinese industries. It should be noted that even in African countries where women oppression was greatly pronounced and where people did not readily welcome women rights, the number of women in formal jobs is greatly increasing owing to modernization. Women have also taken up leadership roles both in businesses and industries as well as in governments. However, it is worth noting that although there has been access of formal jobs by women, most of the women are poorly paid and also have to work in poor working environment in order to earn a living. It should also be noted that it is the women of high social status who have been able to access well paying formal jobs while most of the lower class Chinese women have to work in high risky working environments. Here, they work for long hours and earn very low wages. (Zachery, 2008) Modernization has also increased women awareness on health matters. Furthermore, better health services are now offered thanks to modern western medicine. Increased awareness by women on health matters has greatly boosted Chinese women ability to bring up healthy families. This is because they are able to apply basic hygiene standards in their duties as mothers. Increased use of modern medicine has also reduced suffering by women especially during child birth. The number of women dying from women health related issues has also greatly decreased. The sizes of families brought up by Chinese women have also greatly reduced. However, it should be noted that western medicine has greatly benefited women of high social status as opposed to those of low social status. This is because western medicine is more expensive to afford. However, with Chinese government intervention most if not all women are able to receive western treatment at low cost. Negative impacts of modernization on Chinese women Although modernization has been thought to affect Chinese women only positively, it seems to have affected the women of lower social status negatively. One of the negative effects of modernization on Chinese women is the increase in prostitution. Over the past two decades, more than a dozen statutes and laws have been enacted seeking to curtail the problem of prostitution in China. During that time, the government has shifted its policy from an attempt to eradicate prostitution entirely in the 1980s to a strategy of control and later of regulation in the 1990s. Although women prostitutes continue to be seen as the victims of sexual exploitation by males, when these women are arrested they, and not their male customers, are subjected to mandatory rehabilitation. The deterioration of women's rights under the new economic order has further limited the capacity of women to enjoy equal access to education, employment, welfare, and social and political advancement. Without adequate protection for women's access to social, economic, and political advancement, prostitution cannot be properly prevented and controlled. As such, most lower class Chinese women continue to engage themselves in prostitution in their bid to earn their living. Furthermore, these women constantly face sexual harassment especially when they want favors from their male counterparts. (Pateros, 2003) Another result of modernization that has negatively affected both women of high and low social status in china is the rising of cases related to violence against women. With women awareness of their rights having greatly improved, it seems that men have misunderstood this for rebellion. As a result women continue to face gender violence unleashed on them by their male counterparts. Research shows that cases of gender violence in china are on the increase. (Geogre2010) Furthermore family divorces in china are now though to be more than 24 percent. This is arguably directly related to gender violence and hence modernization. Conclusion Modernization and development have for a long time been thought to have affected women only positively. However, a critical analysis of the effects clearly shows that it might have in fact affected women more negatively than it has positively. In fact some women have trashed down modernization by naming it as a man’s affair. This is because of the numerous negative effects it has had on women. Such negative effects include marginalization of women, women trafficking and prostitution among others. However, it should also be noted that women stand to benefit more from modernization and economic development if they will appreciate the role played by education in their lives. 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