Offshoring: empowering or enslaving women?

Beverley Head
Friday, 27 November 2009 06:24

IT Industry - Market

A regional summit being held in Melbourne next week will explore whether offshore outsourcing empowers or undermines the almost 2 million women who find work on such projects in developing countries in Asia Pacific.

According to the Women’s International Network women perform 65 per cent of the world’s work for 5 per cent of its income. In many developing nations working in call centres can offer women an economic boost - but for many there are unseen costs associated with working in such centres.

Dr Catriona Wallace, the managing director of callcentres.net, will chair a discussion being held at the summit next Thursday afternoon which will explore some of the issues that women working in offshore outsourcing businesses face – from harnessing the opportunities offered by outsourcing to achieve economic independence, to the stigma that some women find attaches to these roles which often involve shift work.

“We will talk about the pros and cons, the monetary advantages and then the disadvantages. A lot of this involves shift work, night work, and there is a negative stigma for women who do that work.” Wallace explained that there were cultural stigma attached to women working at night in many developing nations, and there were also security issues which these women often faced.

“We are hoping to raise the profile of this issue. Our overriding hypothesis is that it does offer an opportunity to girls and women,” said Wallace, but she believed it was also important to get a better understanding of the challenges some women faced when working in overseas call centres for example.

Wallace said companies engaged in offshoring were often dealt harsh treatment by the Australian media, and that comprehensive analysis of the impact of offshoring was rare. The summit offered an opportunity to properly canvas the pros and cons of offshoring.

Certainly offshoring was pushed back into the political spotlight when Family First Senator Steve Fielding introduced his Keeping Jobs from Going Offshore (Protection of Personal Information) Bill 2009, which aims to limit what data can be sent offshore, and hence would most likely reduce the amount of offshore outsourcing that takes place should it ever be passed.

Participants in the offshoring panel discussion at the summit include two academics from Griffith University - Dr Robert Russell and Dr Mohan Thite - both of whom have researched the impact of offshoring; companies which have outsourced their call centre operations to Asia Pacific nations; and two women from the region with executive experience of regional operations providing offshoring services to Australian businesses.

The summit (Asia Pacific Breakthrough: the women, faith and development summit to end global poverty) will be held in Melbourne on 2-3 December.

Further details about the summit can be found here.