Globalization and women

The most important consequence of globalization is poverty. The rate of poverty is 4.3% in Denmark, 9.4% in Germany, 18% in Russia, 35.2% in China and 49.6% in Egypt. By 2001, 15% of the Turkish population was poor and when the limit for poverty was considered as 1.5 $, 38% of the Turkish population was poor and 44% of the poor people lived in the Southeast part of the country.

Poverty causes poor health which in turn leads to poverty. Dedeoglu (2004) reported that poverty has such elements as lack of money, unemployment and lack of social security, intermediary factors such as inability to afford medicine and insufficient nutrition and health consequences such as frequent illnesses, alcoholism, obesity and death.

Seventy percent of the world population is female. Poverty also affects woman health. In fact, it leads to anaemia, obesity, insufficient nutrition, insufficient knowledge about health etc.

Globalization has affected not only health but also working conditions of women. Women were busy with craft works such as weaving at home before the industrial revolution while they started to work in factories after the revolution. They had poor working conditions. With globalization, women were regarded as sexual objects in the media and the most serious affected group by this image was poor women. Sex trade became the most profitable area following drug trafficking and trafficking of illegal weapons.

In conclusion, globalization and the resultant poverty have increased inequalities between genders and gender discrimination and the capital has flowed into the geographical regions where woman workforce is abundant, cheap and unorganized. Women should not adopt the roles imposed by the system. Instead, they should be aware of the fact that they have to struggle for their rights.