Globalization, Economic policy and Employment: Poverty and Gender Implications

When we speak of the impact of globalization on national and local economies, those economies are actually composed of a wide variety of individuals, each class of whom will be effected differently by large-scale economic forces. In this paper, produced for the U.N.’s International Labour Office, PERI Associate Director James Heintz demonstrates how global labor markets are segmented by gender and how any analysis of the impact of macroeconomic policies on growth, employment and poverty reduction needs to be undertaken with this segmentation in mind. Specifically, Heintz addresses how macroeconomic policies differentially effect women’s and men’s employment, looking at monetary policy, trade policy, exchange rate regimes and public sector restructuring. Heintz brings his findings together in recommendations for an alternative policy framework of employment-centered, poverty-reducing development.