The Political Economy of Feminization: From "Cheap Labor" to Gendered Discourses of Work - Teri L. Caraway This article shows how men and women differs by their participation roles in the labor market and how gendered discourses of work enlighten the process of feminization by looking at the outcomes of those searches. Scholars have discussed that the born of feminization in developing countries since World War2 is the reason of women being cheap labor. Also, scholars have argued that combination of patriarchy, which keeps women's wages low unavoidable resulted in the feminization of industrial work. According to the author that feminization is explained as an expansion of women's share of employment of at least 5%. The author thinks that researches about feminization undervalue the importance of gender in labor by only emphasize it as an issue of low wages. Gendered discourses of work not only show the shop-floor elements of feminization but also link local and global processes of it. There are four different areas that feminization can be observed. First, we can see how foreign investment can potentially increase the amount of feminization, Foreign investments create a large share of employment in a sector and they have stronger preferences for hiring women than local investors. Second is the relation of the increase of feminization with employment growth. It provides more chance for feminization because employment rate increases so there is more women in workforce without firing the male workers. Third, spread of feminization in some factories and sectors to others led to encourage feminization by spillover effects. Such as, rather than it is restricted in labor intensive exporters, it will spread all sectors especially those facing high employment growth. The last and the most important one is that feminization does not only occur because of the cheap labor argument which support if the wage differences between gender are small, employers do not desire to employ women. For instance, in Indonesia, women's share of employment continued to expand, even though women were not always cheaper to employ than men. Furthermore, labor as an input of production is less important in capital-intensive sectors because they do not tend to employ much more people when they are expanding. And also, competition is less intense than in labor-intensive sectors. So remarkable amount of feminization will not occur in the higher- paying capital-intensive sectors. The author has focused on gendered discourses of works and process of feminization in Indonesia. When Indonesia began to boost its industrialization in the 1970's, majority of jobs was held by men, But by the mid-1990s, the share of the work force in production by gender was nearly equal. In 1971, only 3 out of 25 sectors employed more women than men (tobacco, garments, and other). Over the next 25 years, women's share of the production workforce increased in most sectors, and women became the majority in 6 additional sectors (textiles, footwear, other chemicals, plastic, electronics, and professional/scientific equipment). Developments in society and politics resulted the flow of women into labor force. Women's educational levels and labor force participation rates increased and fertility rates fell. Until the 1980s, the state had emphasized women's "special" role in development as mothers and wives, but in the 1980s, new emphasis was placed on women's role as a human resource in the economic structure.What is the writer's point of view in terms of three theoretical approaches to International Political Economy? Why? b. What is the main argument of the paper? Do you agree with this argument? If yes, on what grounds? If no, on what grounds