Women have increasingly been absorbed into wage labour within the formal sector as part of the NIDL. In countries such as Mexico, India and the Philippines, export processing zones (EPZs) and free-trade zones specialising in light manufacturing and data-processing have led to a feminisation of the labour market as a result of employers demands for a low-cost, flexible and passive work force'. Despite their insistence on non-union agreements, deregulation of any existing national labour laws and long hours of work, most TNCs tend to better local wages and working conditions, and for many women such jobs are preferable to traditional alternatives such as domestic service.
In most Third World cities, however, the industrial labour force is small and the majority of female workers still find employment in the informal sector. Here, as in the formal sector, women are commonly found in low-waged occupations such as food preparation, petty commodity production, street trading or working in subcontracting enterprises ' (Box 24.5).