This is of course part
of a wider international tendency of somewhat longer duration : the
emergence of international suppliers of goods who rely less and less on
direct production within a specific location and more on subcontracting a
greater part of their production activities. Thus,
the recent
period has seen the emergence and market domination of “manufacturers
without factories”, as multinational firms such as Nike and Adidas
effectively rely on a complex system of outsourced and subcontracted
production based on centrally determined design and quality control. It is
true that the increasing use of outsourcing is not confined to export
firms; however, because of the flexibility offered by subcontracting, it
is clearly of even greater advantage in the intensely competitive
exporting sectors and therefore tends to be even more widely used there.
Much of this outsourcing activity is based in Asia, although Latin America
is also emerging as an important location once again. [Bonacich et al.,
1994] Such subcontracted producers in turn vary in size and manufacturing
capacity, from medium-sized factories to pure middlemen collecting the
output of home-based workers. The crucial role of women workers in such
international production activity is now increasingly recognised, whether
as wage labour in small factories and workshops run by subcontracting
firms, or as piece-rate payment based homeworkers who deal with middlemen
in a complex production chain. [Beneria and Roldan, 1987; Mejia, 1997]
A substantial proportion of such subcontracting in fact extends down to
homebased work. Thus, in the garments industry alone, the percentage of
homeworkers to total workers was estimated at 38 per cent in Thailand,
between 25-29 per cent in the Philippines, 30 per cent in one region of
Mexico, between 30-60 per cent in Chile and 45 per cent in Venezuela.
[Chen, Sebstad and O'Connell, 1998] Home-based work provides substantial
opportunity for self-exploitation by workers, especially when payment os
on a piece-rate basis; also these are areas typically left unprotected by
labour laws and social welfare.
In addition, even other paid work performed by women has become less
permanent and more casual or part-time in nature. In South Korea, one of
the few countries for which such data is available, the proportion of
employed women who casual contracts nearly doubled between 1990 and 1999;
over the 1990s, around 60 per cent of all casual jobs were held by women
workers.
Not only did paid employment conditions deteriorate in the region of women
workers, but unpaid homework also tended to involve longer hours as the
post-crisis adjustment process led to cuts in the provision of and access
to public services. Only in China did paid employment for women workers,
including in manufacturing, continue to grow – but even in China, services
employment dominated in total employment for women, at more than 35 per
cent. Gender wage gaps have narrowed slightly in most countries in the
region, but they remain very high compared to other regions of the world.
Gendered migration patterns in Asia
Asia has become one
of the most significant regions in the world not only in terms of the
cross-border movement of capital and goods, but also in terms of the
movement of people. Asian migration is not a new phenomenon historically,
but in the last two decades, more women have moved than ever before.
Within the Asian region, there is a complex and changing mix of countries
of origin, destination and those that are both. The dominantly labour-sending
countries in all of Asia include Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Indonesia,
Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. The countries that are
mainly destinations of host countries for migrant labour include all of
those in the Middle East, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan
China. Some countries are both sending and receiving international
migrants: India, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand. Obviously, migration is
a multidimensional phenomenon, which can have many positive effects
because it expands the opportunities for productive work and leads to a
wider perspective on many social issues. But it also has negative aspects,
dominantly in the nature of work and work conditions and possibilities for
abuse by employers and others.
Cross-border migration in Asia is highly gendered, with women migrants
largely found in the service sector, especially in the domestic and care
sectors, as well as in entertainment work. Male migration by contrast
tends to be more in response to the requirements of industrialisation, in
construction and manufacturing, as well as in semi-skilled services.
Economic considerations are of course the primary reason for migration by
individuals, especially women; but when this is large enough in sheer
numbers, it has a substantial macroeconomic impact. Remittance incomes
from migrant workers have shored up the balance of payments over the past
decade in India and Philippines, to name just two countries. It is worth
noting that female migrant workers are less affected by business cycle
phenomena in the host countries, because of the different nature of
activities in which they tend to be employed; therefore, both female
migration and remittances from such migration have in general been more
stable than the male versions in the recent period.
However, despite the growing significance of female migration in the
region, there is little recognition by officialdom in the relevant Asian
governments of this process, in terms of ensuring decent working
conditions and remuneration for migrants.
Over the past decades, women migrants have come dominantly from three
countries in Asia: the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. In the
Philippines, women migrants have outnumbered their male counterparts since
1992, and in all these countries women are between 60 to 80 per cent of
all legal migrants for work. The majority are in services (typically low
paid domestic service) or in entertainment work. While Filipino women tend
to travel all over the world, women from the other two countries go
dominantly to the Middle East and Gulf countries in search of employment.
Elsewhere in the region, restrictive regulations have reduced legal female
emigration, but may have increased illegal migration, or trafficking.
Migrants typically tend to fill unskilled, labour-intensive and low-paid
jobs, and are generally unprotected by labour laws. While male migrants in
the region are usually (but not exclusively) in the 3-D occupations
(difficult, dirty, dangerous), women migrant workers tend to be
concentrated in the low paid sectors of the service industry, in
semi-skilled or low-skilled activities ranging from nursing to domestic
service, or in the entertainment, tourism and sex industries where they
are highly vulnerable and subject to exploitation. They rarely have access
to education and other social services, have poor and inadequate housing
and living conditions. When they are illegal or quasi-legal and dependent
upon contractors, they also find it difficult to avail of existing
facilities such as proper medical care and are almost never found to
organise to struggle for better conditions. In general, host governments
are less than sympathetic to the concerns of migrant workers, including
women, despite the crucial role they may play in the host economy. Host
country governments tend to view migrants as threats to political and
social stability, additional burdens on constrained public budgets for
social services and infrastructure, and potential eroders of local
culture.
This is why there is so little attempt across the region to ensure decent
conditions of migrants, even in terms of ensuring their basic safety and
freedom from violence. This is an important issue for women migrants in
particular, since they are specially vulnerable to sexual exploitation,
not only when they are workers in the entertainment and sex industries,
but also when they are employed in other service activities or in
factories as cheap labour.
There is often a fine line between voluntary migration and trafficking in
women (and girl children). Trafficking is a widespread problem which is on
the increase, not only because of growing demand, but also because of
larger and more varied sources of supply given the increasingly precarious
livelihood conditions in many rural parts of Asia.
A substantial amount of trafficking of both women and children occurs not
only for commercial sex work, but also for use as slave labour in
factories and other economic activities such as domestic or informal
service sector work. It is true, of course, that the worst and most
abusive forms of trafficking are those which relate to commercial sexual
exploitation and child labour in economic activities. Nor is it the case
that trafficking occurs mainly through coercion or deception: there is
significant evidence to indicate voluntary movement by the women
themselves, especially when home conditions are already oppressive or
abusive, or at least voluntary sending by the households of such
individuals, given the poverty and absence of economic opportunities in
the home region. Traffickers throughout Asia lure their victims by means
of attractive promises such as high paying jobs, glamorous employment
options, prosperity and fraudulent marriages. When there is employment,
however badly paid, precarious and in terrible conditions, it may still be
preferred to very adverse home circumstances. This in turn means that
those who are employed through trafficking may not always desire to return
home, if the adverse economic and social persist. Also, the possibilities
of return to home communities with safety and dignity are often limited,
given the possibilities of being stigmatised and not easily reintegrated
into the home society.
All this makes the problem of dealing with trafficking much more complex
than is generally appreciated. From the point of view of attacking the
causes, it is important to address the issues of economic vulnerability,
marginalization and attitudes to women, which encourage such movement.
Environmental disasters and development-induced risks such as displacement
are also known to play a role in increasing the incidence of trafficking.
Obviously, across the region there is need for more pro-active policies
regarding migration. It is unfortunate that most government policies with
respect to migration are designed with the male breadwinner model in mind,
because this effectively excludes women, especially those who are
trafficked, from the purview of regulation and protection by law. Very
easy immigration policies can create routes for easier trafficking; but
conversely, tough immigration policies can drive such activities
underground and therefore make them even more exploitative of the women
and children involved. The specificities and complexities of the
trafficking processes, as well as the economic forces that are driving
them, need to be borne in mind continuously when designing the relevant
policies. Across the region, there is hardly any host country legislation
specifically designed to protect migrant workers, and little official
recognition of the problems faced by women migrants in particular. The
same is true for the sending countries, which accept the remittances sent
by such migrants, but without much fanfare or gratitude, and with little
attempt to improve the conditions of these workers in the employment
abroad. Women migrants, who typically are drawn by the attraction of
better incomes and living conditions or by very adverse material
conditions at home, are therefore is a no-woman’s land characterised by a
generalised lack of protection.
Recently there is also a trend for increased migration by more educated
women workers, in the software and IT-enabled service sectors. While such
female migration is still a very small part of the total, it is pointing
to a different tendency with different implications both for work patterns
and for gender relations in both sending and receiving countries.
Conclusion
The picture of women’s
employment and migration in Asia today is much more complex than it has
appeared for some time. There have been some clear gains from the
relatively short-lived process of using much more women’s labour in the
greater export-oriented production of the region. One important gain is
the social recognition of women’s work, and the acceptance of the need for
greater social protection of women workers. The fact of greater entry into
the paid work sphere may have also provided greater recognition of women’s
unpaid household work. At the same time, however, such unpaid work has
tended to increase because of the reduction of government expenditure and
support for many basic public services, especially in sanitation, health
and care-giving sectors. Recent reversals in the feminisation of
employment also point to the possibility of regression in terms of social
effects as well. Already, we have seen the rise of revivalist and
fundamentalist movements across the Asian region, which seek to put
constraints upon the freedom of women to participate actively in public
life. This process is not new to capitalism: in the United States, women
were actively encouraged to participate in paid work to fill in for labour
shortages created by the war during the second World War, only to be
thrust back into unpaid household work almost immediately once the war was
over. However, the speed and extent of the equivalent processes in Asia
still have the capacity for creating major social changes which can have
destabilising effects on gender relations and on the possibilities for the
empowerment of women generally. At the same time, advances in
communication technology and the creation of the “global village” provide
both threats and opportunities. They encourage adverse tendencies such as
the commodification of women along the lines of the hegemonic culture
portrayed in international mass media controlled by giant US-based
corporations, and the reaction to that in the form of restrictive
traditionalist tendencies. But the sheer knowledge of conditions and
possibilities elsewhere can have an important liberating effect upon
women, which should not be underestimated.
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