The predominant fact in this economic scenario is that women are preferred for

working in these new production areas, and the evidence is that women are still largely

confined to lower paid occupations (Pearson 2000). Indeed, a feature of contemporary

globalization is the trend towards the flexibility of labor, including part-time, casual, and

informal sector jobs (including home-based work). Women are over-represented in all

these sectors (UN 1999). The lower wages offered by the new economic development, is

part of the strategy of maintaining competitiveness in international markets. To achieve

such competitiveness, these economic activities must take advantage of all the

environmental, legislative, social, or gender issues that can be translated into less

production costs. The imperative to reduce production costs has even opened the way for

child labor. In a report of the International Labour Organization's International Program

to Eradicate Children Work (IPEC), the use of boys and girls in two of the main flower

producing provinces in Ecuador could increase to 80% of adult workers (Castelnuovo

1999:20). This work is hidden in the category of "helpers".

 Thus the incorporation of women into the labor market is a strategy to take

advantage of the vulnerability of a social group that has few job options and must accept

the poor economic and social conditions of their employment. This incorporation of

women in capitalist work relations is a kind of proletarization, the consequence of which

is the growing dependence of nuclear households on wages. Deere (1978) notes that this

process is the conversion of the household from a unit of direct production to one of

consumption.

 As in other export activities promoted by trade liberalization measures, it is a

debated issue whether NTAE jobs have empowered women. For organizations