What is it with women and high heeled
shoes? Such shoes are known to be uncomfortable, unhealthy and even dangerous
for those wearing them. Not only do they force the wearer's feet and body
into unnatural positions, they are hard to stand or walk around in for
any extended time, and prolonged use can lead to damage of internal reproductive
organs. Despite what appear to be these rather obvious drawbacks, they
still dominate in high-fashion female footwear – to the point where the
higher the heels, the more expensive and fashionable the shoes are likely
to be. They remain popular and may even have become more so among women
across the world, who want to be thought sexy and abreast of the latest
trends.
In fact, they seem to be excessively popular in the most unlikely surroundings.
On the streets of the charming Old City in Tallinn, Estonia (which is
a UNESCO World Heritage site as the largest still-preserved Hanseatic
urban centre), walking can be a complicated activity at the best of times,
despite the delightful views and appealing historic architecture. This
is because most of the streets are still paved with cobblestones dating
in some places to as long ago as the 13th century, in other places more
''recent'' – that is, as late as the 17th century. The stones are naturally
uneven and irregular but still highly polished due to constant use.
In spring and summer these cobblestoned streets are at least clear, if
often wet - but for around five months of the year, snow and ice make
them particularly treacherous for navigation. So even with the most sensible
made-for-walking sort of shoes, pedestrians have to be careful to avoid
slipping or turning ankles on the uneven surfaces. But even on these difficult
streets, it is a common sight to see gorgeous young Estonian women walking
implausibly briskly along in footwear of the most extravagant heel length
imaginable.
So there are women wearing all sorts of different clothing, from miniskirts
to casual jeans to elaborate evening wear, but with very high stiletto
heels. These very scary high heels in turn come on all sorts of shoes:
not just dressy shoes for the night out, but sandals and even apparently
casual shoes that look like sneakers or sport shoes in front but have
crazy high heels at the back. For those who enjoy sitting at roadside
cafes and watching the world go by, this can even make it hard to raise
the eyes above the knees: so varied, fascinating and downright incredible
are the shoes worn especially by younger women.
It is observed by some locals that this tendency reflects the subtle but
still pervasive patriarchy that characterises gender relations in Estonia.
Corporate clothing retailers, for example, have very different marketing
strategies and choice of garments for women in Estonia than for their
counterparts in neighbouring Finland and Sweden: in Estonia the focus
is much more on selling sexy, revealing clothing that demands in turn
that the women have to be fitter. Some young women note the social pressure
to achieve perfect bodies and look attractive at all times, which is possibly
more marked here than in most other European countries.
This is more than just a cultural or even sociological phenomenon. In
fact, the extravagantly high shoes so beloved of young women in Estonia
could serve as metaphor for the Estonian economy, and by extension, the
broader European economy: in the throes of self-inflicted pain in the
hope of preserving a certain self-image and attracting others, and relying
on possibly the wrong indicators of success to achieve self-esteem.
Most mainstream analysts would immediately challenge such an assessment.
Estonia was one of the more developed regions of the former Soviet Union,
the home of the electronic engineering and early ''knowledge-based'' industries.
That tradition has continued to some extent in the post-Soviet era: for
instance, Estonia is the home of ''Skype'', which was developed in Tallinn,
and is currently promoting not just software development but biomedical
innovation as means of riding the ladder of economic success within a
broad macroeconomic policy that puts the entire responsibility for growth
on private activity.
There are limitations of such a strategy. For example, Rainer Kattel and
other researchers at the Tallinn University of Technology have argued
that these policies have been a double-edged sword: on the one hand enabling
fast and furious industrial restructuring while, on the other hand, locking
Estonia and similar East European economies into economic activities with
low value added and low productivity growth and thus undermining future
sustainable growth.
The painful industrial restructuring that has occurred may be one of the
reasons why Estonia is cited as one of the economic ''success stories''
of the European periphery. The other is in terms of the macroeconomic
policies that have ''delivered'' in terms of cutting government fiscal
deficits. Estonia is a Baltic country that went through the hoops of very
deflationary macroeconomic policies for several years for the privilege
of joining the eurozone, a goal that was achieved early this year. Deficits
were cut by sharply reducing public spending even as corporate tax rates
have been at zero for almost a decade.
The ratio of Estonian public debt to GDP was always very low, even as
low as 3.7 per cent of GDP in 2007. Because of severe fiscal austerity,
even during the crisis it did not increase much, and is still less than
8 per cent of GDP. The tight control on spending has kept fiscal deficits
very low and budgets almost in balance. This is seen as a huge success
by the government and is widely touted even in the rest of Europe as the
example of how following stringent austerity policies can work for a small
open European economy.
In fact, all this apparent success has been achieved at the cost of significant
(and potentially increasing) material pain for the bulk of the population.
The budget cuts affected public services, further increased unemployment
and hit poorer sections hardest. GDP fell by 15 per cent in 2009 and is
still well below the levels witnessed before the financial crisis. In
fact, current estimates suggest that the economy is unlikely to reach
the 2007 level of GDP before 2014 – in other words, a seven year period.
So employment indicators are bad and worsening. Unemployment is currently
hovering around 15 per cent of the labour force, and the rate is closer
to 20 per cent for youth. New jobs created tend to be more fragile, insecure
and low paying. There has been a steady and continuous erosion of real
wages.
This happened first through labour market ''flexibility'' measures that
allowed employers simply to announce that certain jobs were now ''90 per
cent'' or even ''80 per cent'' of the previous work, even though the work
done did not actually change and sometimes even increased. It is happening
now through the mechanism of inflation (currently just above 5 per cent
annual rate), which is undermining the living standards of workers in
a slow but effective manner, even as nominal wages are stagnant or falling.
This has contributed to an increase in household debt, as households borrow
to try and sustain their living standards, forcing a private imbalance
instead of a public one.
This ''internal devaluation'' has contributed to the falling product wage,
which is the only means of making the economy more competitive with fixed
exchange rates and now within the eurozone. As in the currently troubled
peripheral economies of Europe like Greece, Ireland and Portugal, it was
expected that exports would make up for the shortfall in domestic demand,
but this has simply not happened.
In fact, exports fell in 2009, and in 2010 have only managed to get back
to their 2008 level because of increased demand coming from industries
in Sweden and Finland that use the output of Estonian electricity generation
and electronic engineering industries. These are not particularly large
employment generators, so employment in export industries has not gone
up even though exports have recently shown an upward trend.
The high unemployment and erosion of living standards of the population
that still has paid jobs are not immediately visible in the centre of
Tallinn. Here, the unequal pattern of recent growth has meant that the
city centre (including the historic old town) remains a scene of bustling
activity. Economic degradation is more evident in smaller towns and is
also disproportionately concentrated among the Russian minority, whose
members tend to be much poorer on average than native Estonians.
It is also not that this economic strategy has reached the end of its
possible road. Indeed, with other peripheral economies facing so many
problems, it is quite possible (and maybe even likely) that Estonia's
fiscal indicators will render it once again an attractive destination
for European finance capital. This could then create yet another property
cum finance bubble in the private sector, which would generate rapid GDP
growth (but not necessarily too much employment) for a few years before
the bubble then bursts.
This is a strategy that is based on the belief that increases in inequality
will be accepted for quite some more time among a population that has
been rendered more passive and quiescent by its history and current socio-political
proclivities. So, just like the young women in high heels stepping in
determined if precarious fashion along Tallinn's cobblestoned streets,
the Estonian economy too may proceed in a way that chooses self-inflicted
pain to be rewarded by external approbation.