Since the seventies, a number of countries previously categorized as underdeveloped have experienced a tremendous economic take off using policies of export-oriented industrialization and the encouragement of foreign investment. These countries have seen such a big jump in their economic wealth and industrial output that they are now internationally ranked as newly-industrialized countries (NICs). In Asia, the first country to ascend from a relatively underdeveloped status to an industrialized economy was Japan, and today Japan already ranks as one of the richest countries in the world. In the 70's, another group of NICs were developing in Asia, namely, Taiwan, south Korea, Singapore and Hongkong.

There are certain similarities among these four NICs in terms of their economic development: they achieved high growth levels by developing export-oriented light industries, notably textiles and garments, electronics and plastic goods; in order to attract foreign investment in their industries, their governments provided very attractive incentives which included low tariffs, low taxation, abundant cheap labour supply and a controlled labour force, and often established export-processing zones (EPZs); and women workers made up the majority of the labour force in their EPZs and other export-oriented industries.

This article will examine the socio-economic conditions of the backbone of the export-oriented workforce in these NICs, the industrial women workers. Attempts will be made to discuss whether these women workers have largely benefited or been alienated and marginalised in the process of industrialisation and economic development in these areas.

Political Development Falls Behind Economic Growth

Workers in these four NICs have largely been deprived of their fundamental labour rights such as trade union rights, right to strike and labour protection such as minimum wage. All these countries have a very low unionisation rate (lower than 20% of the labour force), as a result of political repression or government control of union activity. Union-busting activity is rampant, either practiced directly by the governments or by the industrialists. Repression is not so obvious in the case of Hongkong, but low unionization levels result from a lack of protection from management retaliation and also the political preoccupation of unions which are loyal to different sides in the China-Taiwan wrangle. In the EPZs of Taiwan, south Korea and Singapore, the already limited labour rights normally granted are further reduced. The right to strike and to unionize are banned in most EPZs to protect the "essential industries"

Origin of the Women Workers

Before the era of the export-oriented industrialization policy, most of the women in Asian NICs had a simple life-style: they grew up and worked in the parents' family until they got married, taking care of younger brothers and sisters and helping their mothers in household chores and received minimal or no formal education. They got married mostly in their twenties and became a life-long unpaid wives and mothers, as well as engaging in farmwork or assisting their husbands in other occupations. The majority of the population before industrialization were of course, from the rural areas.

A common socio-cultural thread running through the societies of Taiwan, south Korea, Singapore and Hongkong is that they are all strongly influenced by the ancient Chinese teaching of Confucius, which expound a philosophy and morality which are notoriously male-centered. It is intrinsic to Confucian ethics that women are inferior, the source of trouble, and should be subordinated to men under a natural law. A famous Confucian saying goes: "A women should obey her father in her family, obey her husband in marriage, and obey her sons in her old age." Although the teaching originated about two thousand years ago, it still deeply permeates most Chinese or Chinese influenced societies in the world today.

Since industrialization began, the governments of the NICs have begun to implement compulsory education to equip the new generations with basic knowledge to serve the labour needs of the new industries, though the female populace still continue to receive less education than their male counterparts. Since the sixties, young women began to be employed in factories on a large scale. They formed a majority of the child labours, many force starting work at the age of 13 and spending most of their teen in the early sweatshops making plastic toys or garments. By the seventies, these women workers were employed on the more sophisticated factory assembly lines and became the backbone of the modern export-oriented light industries of the NICs.

It is true that with industrialization, women in these Asian NICs have for the first time in history been able to get paid work instead of playing the centuries-old women's role of the unpaid mother-wife labourer.

The direct results of these increased employment opportunities and urbanisation for women are that they achieved some degree of financial control over their own lives attained a higher degree of domestic independence from their parents; and also gained a higher degree of social freedom in marriage, social activities and lifestyles. The industrialisation also brought somewhat better education and smaller nuclear families for the female population.

The Myth of Equal Opportunity and Equal Work

The increase in job opportunities, however, still falls far short of the ideal of "equal opportunity and equal pay". Jobs may be available, but mostly it is only those unskilled and low-paid jobs have been opened to women. Technical and managerial jobs are either tacitly or explicitly reserved for men in most cases throughout the NICs.

A survey on women at work conducted in 1983 by the National Youth Commission in Taiwan found that 66.9% of the women they interviewed said they faced sexual discrimination in salaries, job responsibilities and promotion chances.¹

A survey of 724 firms in 1984 carried out by the Korea Employers' Federation showed that 33% of the respondents gave a flat no to promotion prospects for their female employees, and only 2.1% of the employers said they would hire female college educated workers for technical jobs. 17.4% of the employers interviewed said they would avoid women employees due to extra costs such as maternity leave, limited working career and legal limits on such things as total hours, overtime and night work. 12.9% of the bosses gave the reason that women caused problems in labour management because they need one day per month for menstruation leave.²

In Masan EPZ in south Korea, '89% of the total zone employees were operative workers in 1980, and most of these were female workers, whereas men predominated in the higher echelons. All the engineers and technicians were male, but men made up only 13.6% of the unskilled labourers.³

Industrialization Brings Better Skills — For Whom?

Another argument often promulgated by government officials, industralists and academics is that along with industrialization and investment by high-powered transnational corporations, there will be an improvement of skills and the spread of new technology. It is assumed that all this eventually benefits the whole labour force and population by boosting the people's skill and thus their economic well-being. However, studies of tens of thousands of women factory workers in the NICs show that women have either been left out or deliberately marginalized by the high-tech transnational investment. According to a study of the International Labour Office:

Promotion prospects for unskilled female workers in the EPZs are usually restricted. Almost all of them start working as factory floor operators and because of the virtual absence of an internal job ladder they remain in this position until they stop working in the EPZs. The skills which they learn from their jobs are acquired in a matter of weeks and peak productivity is generally reached after only a couple of months. In view of the low skill contents of the jobs, there are also very few transferable skills which might give the outgoing female workers a competitive advantage in the search for alternative employment.⁴

The Singapore government has established a Skills Development Fund which levies a payroll tax on employers that can be recouped if they send employees for further training. So far most training funds within this scheme have been used for managerial and administrative personnel, or occasionally for clerical or technical staff. Little has filtered down to the women operators on the factory floor, largely because there are not any positions for which to train her.⁵

The case of electronics women workers in Hongkong more or less tells the same story. In Hongkong, electronics assembly operators are paid a monthly wage of HKSl ,700 - 2,000 (US$250) and the same wages are paid to workers whether they have ten years' experience or are newly employed. In the words of some women electronics workers: "It's not that we don't want to acquire better skill for promotion. The problem is that first, the company never provides chance for us women workers to undertake skill-training courses, and second, there are absolutely no promotion prospects in this business. . . A few of us had out of curiosity taken some technical courses in the evening at our union, and soon we found out that skilled or not, we are treated and paid the same by our managers. .. After a while, you do get the feeling that you are not regarded with any importance by the company; you are so dispensable. The choice is either you take the dirt cheap pay and the dead boring, repetitive and trivial jobs or you leave."⁶

The pattern of deskilling and marginalisation of women in the industrialization process has become still clearer in recent years because of changing economic trends. To confront market competition, economic restructuring has been forced upon industrialists and promoted by governments in all of these NICs. As noted in a report put out by the ILO's Asian Employment Program in 1984, "the phase of rapid growth based on labour intensive manufactured exports has proved to be short for the NICs, which in recent years have been trying to achieve transitions to more skill-intensive exports in order to sustain industrial growth." When you consider that most women workers have not acquired transferable or meaningful industrial skills over the past three decades while industries in the eighties are moving towards higher-skilled jobs, it is clear that once again women are being pushed aside in the face of the changing requirements of capital.

Longer Hours, Half the Wages Women

Women employees' wages in these NICs generally represent only about half of the men's, with women in south Korea sitting furthest down the ladder making an average of 44% of men's wages (1984) and Singaporean women faring best making 70% of the men's average wages (1984).

Not only do women generally earn much less than men, in many instances they work longer hours. According to a 1984 Korea Development Institute report, female workers in south Korea work an average of 238 hours each month, compared with 229 hours a month for male employees. The same study also reported that 40% of female employees are paid less than 100,000 won a month (US$116), while the comparable figure for male workers was only 6.1%.'' A survey of the Masan EPZ in south Korea in 1977 found that 30.1% of the workers (most of whom were women) worked more than 15 hours a day.⁸

The situation for Singaporean women workers is relatively better. Due to a consistent labour shortage in recent years, factory workers have been offered much higher wages than their colleagues in the rest of Asia. "A women worker with 10 years' seniority in a MNC electronics factory can earn as much as a recent university graduate," said an ILO study.' The study also found that women working in transnational electronics corporations could earn more than some males workers in local companies in Singapore. On average, Singaporean women workers put in a 44-hour week. They are also reluctant to work overtime or night-shifts which are usually taken up by the poorer migrant labourers from Malaysia. Despite this, there are three times more women than men doing night shift work.

In Hongkong, garment and electronics workers are often paid piece-rate wages. During busy seasons, overtime is usually forced, although most workers are willing to work overtime to increase their meagre basic wages. Garment workers may work 70 hours a week during rush seasons. This practice sharply conflicts with Hongkong labour laws which state that women employees can only work two hours overtime a day and 12 hours a week at the most, on top of a basic 48-hour week.

The other side of this "flexible" piece-rate pay system is that workers suffer from severe underpayment or underemployment during low seasons. Some electronic-watch workers in Hongkong, while being able to make a maximum of about HK$3,000 a month for four months a year during the high season, have to turn to other jobs to make ends meet or stay half-employed for the majority of the year. During the past two years, due largely to world recession and protectionist quotas slammed into place by importing countries in the West, some women electronics workers have found themselves left only with two days work each week. There is no minimum wage in Hongkong, south Korea and Singapore which would cover such fluctuations.

A 1976 trade union report in south Korea stated that: "Under provisions of article 57 of the Labour Standard Law, women workers should not work more than 10 hours a day, more than 54 hours a week, nor more than 200 hours a month, but in reality they work 350 hours a month in some establishments. This is believed to have resulted from employers' schemes to conceal low wages, and from the ignorance of women workers themselves about their health."¹⁰ The Singapore government has recently waived existing legislation against night work for women in order to enable EPZ enterprises to operate three shifts of women workers per day. 

These statistics and facts about the real working hours of women contradict the much-trumpeted legislation protecting women and children. Reality has more often than not shown that legislation protecting fair and equal treatment of men and women can always be ignored, waived or changed whenever the entrepreneurs or the ruling class are hardpressed for greater flexibility and availability of the labour force.

Low-paid Work at Factories and Unpaid Work at Home

Low pay and long hours at work are of course only one half of the problem for women workers in the Asian NICs. Deeply entrenched with the traditional Confucian male-oriented values is the predestined role of women at home. Women in these four Chinese or Chinese-influenced societies are still expected to take on the major household workload.

Within the working class, working women have no escape clause from domestic work like many of their middle class counterparts who can afford to employ domestic maids. Whenever a women is at home, she is always expected to perform the household chores for her brothers, father, husband or sons even though she might have worked as many, if not more, hours than the males at a factory.

Share of Housework by Working Spouses in Hong Kong

Source: Report on Working Mothers and Family Functioning. 1982

Married Women; To Work or Not?

Why do half of the married female population in NICs stop doing paid jobs?

In all four Asian NICs, the concept that a woman should stop working after securing a "good" husband and a "successful" marriage still dominates everybody's thinking. On the other hand, the poor prospect of getting a reasonable wage, and the difficulty to accommodate factory work and household work at the same time scare women away from paid employment.

Age-Sex-Specific Labour Force Participation Rates: 1971 and 1981, Hong Kong

Source: Hong Kong Census & Statistics Dept. 1982 - 1981 Census Main Report, quoted in "Asian Exchange", Vol. 3, No. 1, April 1984

A survey of the Federation of Korea Trade Unions found that 70% of women in south Korea resigned from their work due to working conditions, 30% cited low incomes and 10% complained of an excessive work burden. However, after some years of staying at home, married women often find it hard to secure paid work again in the factory.

Married women in Singapore who are over 35 and have stopped work for some years complained that they found it very difficult to get jobs again. The employers cited family commitment, loss of dexterity and difficulties in working with the young workers as reasons for not hiring older married women. However under closer scrutiny, it can be clearly seen that these are only convenient excuses employers think up of when they see fit.

An interesting parallel can be drawn to illustrate the fact that whether women are considered fit or not for work it all depends on the capitalists' need for their production. During the sixties, when Singaporean banking and financial sector was taking off rapidly, a large number of women were employed and promoted to managerial and executive positions to meet the great demand. Since the late seventies, a backlash has occured, and with the flow of sufficient males into the job market, few women are being hired to such positions anymore.

During the early eighties, a labour shortage (mainly manual) drove employers in Singapore to tap the cheap and under-utilized labour potential of women. The government together with the entrepreneurs were active in promoting the return of married women into morning, afternoon and evening part-time shifts. As a result, some attention had to be given to the question of childcare facilities for working women. The National Trades Union Congress, which is organized under government supervision, set up Child Care Services with a staff of 200 looking after 1,200 children for their members in 1984. A Singapore National Employers' Federation symposium in 1984 aimed at bringing married women back to the labour market said:

"Employers cannot continue to insulate themselves from family issues and the of parent-employees."

r working women all too soon hit a snag. In 1985, due to the world economic slump, rising protectionism in the West, and the introduction of automation in the big electronics conglomerates, there was a sharp economic slump in Singapore. Massive layoffs, especially in the electronics assembly factories, unexpectedly hit many workers (see the section on new technology below). Most of those presently being laid off are unskilled assembly workers, the majority of whom are women and migrant workers from Malaysia.

an work outside their homes, the lack of confidence among women (consolidated by the Confucian teaching over the past two-and-a-half thousand years) has created a major mental block, discouraging women who would like to pursue a career. A survey conducted by Taiwan's National Youth Council in 1983 found that 83% of the women respondents agreed that women were not suitable for high executive positions. Three quarters said they were ready to give up their jobs if they were forced to choose between the family and career. 84.4% believed that marriage harmony would not be enhanced if the wife worked outside the home. Nevertheless, 40% said they would not be eager to marry if they enjoyed economic independence.

Unspoken Truths of Homeworking

In all NICs, homeworking has been on the rise among married working class women. The most common form of homeworking is garment sewing or simple toy or electronic products assembling. Many small-scale garment, plastic and electronics factories in Hongkong, Singapore, Taiwan and south Korea subcontract piece-work to women who, due to household and childrearing responsibilities, can only work at home. The pay-rate is usually much lower than the full-time factory workers' wages.

Not much study or survey had been done on this aspect of women's work. According to some reports and personal interviews with women working at home, most of them have mixed feelings about such put-out work. On the one hand, homeworking enables childrearing women to make some money, however little, and to engage in some occupation during the gaps in household chores. However, most of them find homeworking along with household work extremely boring and mind-dulling.

As one woman puts it: "There's always unfinished work lying around you waiting for you to do. You can't rest completely without feeling guilty of not performing your duties. You feel that for every minute you spend on resting, you waste that minute of income. The factory boss always expects you to finish them in no time, thinking you've got a lot of free time any way. Your husband comes home and looks at you and the pile of unfinished garments, gives you look as if saying, 'what have you been doing all day?' Or if he thinks you've neglected his children and other domestic jobs, he will shout, 'to hell with this meagre work!' And there's no one to chat with, to share your work with. It's so boring and so lonely. "'¹² Weariness and isolation are the usual feelings of most women who take to homeworking. Physically it can also mean exceedingly long, unregulated working hours.

Women homeworkers are always welcomed by industrialists for many reasons. First, their wages are "naturally" much lower than the factory floor operators, on top of which they are not entitled to any labour benefits or restricted by any labour laws. Second, homeworkers are totally dispensable whenever the employers need to cut production. Industrialists have no legal responsibilities towards the homeworkers whatsoever. Third, homeworkers with their isolated working environment have no recourse to act on grievances about the wages or conditions of their work since none of them are unionized. For the working class as a whole, homeworkers further depress wages and provide the bosses with cheap alternatives should factory workers attempt to struggle for better pay and conditions.

Migrant Labour Makes Labour Cheap

The advent of more mobile and large-scale labour migration has had a significant effect on many aspects of the labour force in the NICs. As migrant labour almost always moves into the lowest layer of the labour market, it is always women labourers who are the first and hardest hit. Both women workers and migrant workers belong to the pool of labour which can be described as unskilled or low-skilled, temporary, cheap, disorganized and easily controlled. For the capitalists, the availability of a large pool of migrant labour is very attractive indeed. For the workers, migrant labour is an uncontrollable and unforeseen threat to their livelihood. It is no accident that it is often the working class who feel most hostile towards migrants in every country.

Singapore, with a comparatively small population, has been always reUant on the pool of cheap manual migrant labour coming mostly from Malaysia. Most of the earlier migrant labourers came in the sixties and the seventies, and are termed the 'traditional migrants'. They were in great demand when fast-growing Singapore experienced labour shortages. In recent years overseas labourers have also been coming from other countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia and south Korea, particularly to work as domestic helpers and construction workers. About 150,000 of the total 1.2 million working population in Singapore is migrant labour.

In the eighties, some overseas workers were brought in by companies in group contracts. For example, an American typewriter maker brought in 195 south Korean production workers in mid-1984 to work in its Singapore plant when there was a labour shortage. The women were mostly aged between 18 and 26 and were originally brought into Singapore on a two-year contract, receiving wages much lower than the average Singaporean electronics workers. Their arrival was received with a considerable amount of hostility and anxiety by the local production workers and the unions, as it was seen as a threat to labour demands as well as labour organizing in the local scene. But ultimately, these imported workers were not the winners either. In early 1985, the company experienced a fall in demand and all of the 195 women were retrenched and repatriated to south Korea with a month's notice.'¹³

The immediate effect of migrant labour on women workers is to threaten job openings and wage levels. Most migrant labourers enter the unskilled labour force in jobs such as factory assembly line operators, cleaners, waitresses, domestic servants and construction workers. Since migrant workers always come from a much poorer area than the host country, they usually expect and accept much lower wages and much poorer working conditions than the indigenous workers. Industrialists are all too ready to show the indigenous workers that they either "work hard" and be "reasonable" with their wage demands or they will all too easily lose their jobs to immigrants.

The whole question of migrant labour deserves great deal more discussion and analysis if suitable strategies for international concerted action by labour groups are to be created to improve the conditions of workers everywhere. At present, it is disturbing to see some trade unionists adopting simplistic hostile positions advocating repressive policies against immigrants. It should be realized, especially by labour leaders, that immigrant labour is only a symptom of the problem but not the source.

Runaway Plants in Constant Pursuit of Cheaper Labour

In recent years, women garment and electronics workers in the Asian NICs have faced another major threat to their livelihood, which echoes the experience of their colleagues in Europe and the US during the sixties and seventies. In their constant pursuit of cheaper and less-organised labour, many big textiles and electronics companies have begun to move large parts of their labour-intensive assembling operations away from NICs to poorer and less developed neighbouring countries such as the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and China.

Most people in the NICs, under the guidance of the industrialists, the bourgeosie and government leaders, still generally welcome the arrival of transnational corporations with their high technology. Women workers in the eighties have suddenly and painfully discovered the other side of the story about transnational investment. These unskilled and usually unorganised textiles and electronics workers have found themselves under the constant threat of their plants closing down, often with very short or no notice and little severance pay. Government authorities can do almost nothing about footloose multinationals who decide to disinvest, let alone an ordinary women worker left stranded with few transferable skills after years of work.

The fact that union activity and labour rights are being heavily curbed in these countries leaves the workers ill-equipped to effectively protect their interests and livelihood during such events.

Women Workers and New Technology

Another reason for plant closures and withdrawal of transnationals in addition to seeking cheaper labour in poorer countries, is the introduction of new technology and the automation of the production process.

Most electronic firms in Singapore are subsidiaries of major US multinational corporations and are totally dependent on exporting parts to supply their parent companies. However, with introduction of automation and hi-technology, many companies originating from the industrial Western countries found themselves once again able to concentrate their operations back in their home base as labour-intensive processes can be undertaken by capital-intensive automated plants. Since 1984, several major computer firms in Singapore have been reportedly laying off staff as the US industry goes through restructuring.

The Singapore operation of General Electric of the US, the largest private-sector employer in the country, sacked about 1,000 workers in 1985. The retrenched comprised more than 10% of the company's Singapore workforce. Most of them were production or maintenance workers and were non-Singaporeans. The company area relations manager, Mr. S.K. Lee, said that the mass retrenchment was a result of automation and the market slump.'¹⁴

Retrenchment of unskilled women assembly workers has become common in the electronics manufacturers in Asia's NICs in the eighties, partly due to introduction of automation in the production. For most of these women workers, foreign investment and industrialisation have meant very little except that the expenditure of their hard labour for most of their prime years in return for a monthly wage of US$200-400. The introduction of new technology is an even more alienating process for them. Not only are these women workers being ignored and pushed aside in the whole process, they are being further marginalized in having their employment threatened.

Protectionism Vs Workers

Further plant closures and runaways in the Asian NICs, especially among the textile and garment enterprises, are caused by the increasing protectionist policies exercised by the industrialized nations of North America and Europe in the eighties. Textile and garment industries have since the sixties been the major employers for most women workers in these countries. Textile concerns closing down or moving to other countries as a result of protectionist measures from the West have left thousands of workers suddenly unemployed or underemployed.

The industrialists, with their abundant resources and power, usually manage to find their way around adversities and still remain in the privileged class. To them, protectionism means they have to find ways to switch production elsewhere to get around the quotas or divert their capital into other business. For the women workers, protectionism from the importing countries mean the loss of their means of livelihood.

Women Workers Organising

Unionization among the workforce in Asian countries is consistently low due to tight government curbs on independent organizing and repression of labour groups seeking to confront employers on the genuine needs of their membership. Most Asian countries including Singapore, Indonesia, China, Taiwan and Korea, have their national unions either controlled directly by the government or tightly supervised under heavy legislation. Foreign investors frequently make loud threats that they will move their operations elsewhere if their factories are threatened by unionization. In all EPZs in Asia, labour activity is tightly restricted or banned. In south Korea, for example, a special labour law prohibits any industrial disputes from taking place within foreign companies.

While women's membership of unions in the NICs is proportionally high, their participation in the established union hierarchy is once again quite marginal.

Unionisation rate

Membership in the textile and electronics unions in Hongkong and Singapore is overwhelmingly female, with women representing up to to 80% of the total. However, the high proportion of females is seldom justly reflected in the union leadership. For the first time in 1984 a woman unionist was appointed executive-secretary of two industrial unions, the Textile Industries Workers' Union and Building Construction and Timber industries Employees' Unions in Singapore.

In Hongkong, however, women unionists are prominant in the leadership in the textiles and electronics unions. The major improvements unionists have been working for in recent years include establishment of unemployment benefits, improvement of protection for workers regarding severance and plant closures, and paid maternity leave.

A longstanding problem with women workers organising is the fact that the majority of male trade unionists and labour activists are still steeped in a male chauvinist mentality, reinforced by the Confucian values of the four NICs. Even in the labour circle, the stereotype that woman's place is with the family while the man masters the outside world still prevails strongly. This attitude largely explains why women take up a very small minority among the leadership in trade unions. Labour activists are mostly men and at most pay lip service to the feminist cause. The picture of male activists fighting for social justice in the outside world, while fully expecting their wives to prepare for their domestic needs and take care of all chores at home is quite common in the NICs.

Women Lead the Korean Labour Movement

It is thought-provoking that it is not the better-educated and more resourceful women in Singapore and Hongkong, but their much more marginalised and repressed sister workers in south Korea who have been waging some of the most active labour struggles in the Asian NICs.

Organized women workers represent a most significant labour and political movement in south Korea. Though the official figures from the Federation of Korea Trade Unions in Seoul give only 25% for unionised textile workers, these statistics omit any independent labour movements. Since the seventies many such independent unions, mainly led by female textile and electronics workers, have emerged and fought for genuine union rights and better wages and working conditions in face of harsh and brutal suppression by both the government and their managements. In the eighties these union leaders have also begun to call for women's rights such as equal pay and maternity leave.

Most of these activists are single factory workers in their twenties, who have completed only six years of primary schooling and who started to work at the age of 16-18. Most of them left their families in the countryside in the seventies to look for work in the major cities. The reason given by a leading women labour activist from south Korea for the strong women's organising effort is that because they are so badly marginalised with their extremely low pay, poor working and living conditions and labour rights, they have nothing to lose in the fight for better deals.¹⁵

The struggle put up by women workers at Y.H. Textile (1979), Control Data (1982) and Daewoo (1984) were among the most acclaimed and significant labour struggles in recent years in south Korea, despite the fact that strikes and collective bargaining were made illegal under the National Defence Act (1971).

In 1979, 200 young women employees of the Y.H. Textile and Wig factory staged a peaceful vigil and fast to protest the company's closure of their plant. On August II, the fifth day of the vigil, more than 1,000 riot police, armed with clubs and steel shields, broke into the building where the women were staying and forcibly dragged the women out. 21-year old Kim Kyong-suk was killed during the incident. It was her death that touched off widespread rioting throughout south Korea that many attributed to the downfall of President Park Chung Hee.'¹⁶

Women workers at the US electronics multinational Control Data, and textile workers at Daewoo Apparel Co. and the Chunggye garment complex in Seoul have put up vigorous and courageous campaigns to protest union-busting, unfair labour practices and job losses over the past two years. In most cases, the sit-ins and peaceful hunger strikes of the women workers were met with brutal violence and suppression by the police and the management. A frequent tactic employed by the management in answer to these women's demands for labour rights was to hire male thugs to beat up and sexually assault the activists. In some cases these women were smeared on their faces with human excreta, and in other incidents, the management brought in the fathers and brothers of the striking women workers to "bring these shameful women to the rightful place and frame of mind".

Despite all this brutality and repression, the women workers in south Korea are still waging daily struggles for their rights, and are often supported by the student movement and some church groups.

Conclusion

It is a paradox that despite clear evidence that women workers have played a crucial and central part in the whole industrialization process in the Hong Kong, Singapore, south Korea and Taiwan over the past three decades, up to this date these women are still regarded by the society and by themselves as only a secondary or subsidiary labour force. Honest recognition of the economic role they are playing would expose the injustice of their low wages, low job status, unequal promotion opportunities, lack of skills training, lack of job security, and under-representation in the union world.

This situation is of course not a result of coincidence, instead it has been engineered by capitalists and the ruling elite in order to maintain a constant pool of cheap, easily controllable and disposable labour. Thus most of the problems faced by the industrial women discussed above are not only the consequences of sexism, but also symptoms of class exploitation.

Working class women are frequently exploited by middle class women in the NICs, even though the latter might see themselves as believing in the cause of feminism. The case of maids employed in Hongkong and Singapore for poor wages under harsh working conditions to enable many middle class women continue their career or personal life is an obvious example. There are of course many more subtle and complex forms of class exploitation among women. Any attempts to resolve the problems facing women workers must take the question of class fully into consideration in order to chart any meaningful direction.

In this light, it is not very encouraging to see the direction of most of the feminist movements found in this region. The foremost problem is of course the general underdevelopment of political movements due to the heavy repression of dissent. There have been women's groups formed largely among the middle class in Hongkong, Taiwan, Singapore and south Korea. They seldom address the problems faced by working class women or the issue of class contradictions. More hopeful signs of grassroot-oriented feminist movements in recent years stem from the women workers' struggles in south Korea and some embryonic efforts to set up a politically-oriented feminist group in Hongkong.

It is essential that women workers themselves play the controlling role in any campaign striving to end exploitation and fulfill the needs of working class women. This is quite possible; after thirty years, the concrete existence of a class of women industrial workers can no longer be ignored. Indeed, more working class women have come to realize that major part of their lives, both economic and social, do revolve around being factory wage-earners. With the consolidation of this identity, it is likely that a proletarian feminist movement will emerge in the region.

On the cultural front, the force of male-oriented Confucianism has to be dealt with in order to eliminate the extreme sexist values. One starting point lies with conscientising males in progressive circles. It has to be shown that the feminist struggle is not something only of concern to women; and most importantly, it is not something which can be set aside until "after the revolution"; it has to be an essential part of the liberation process for any workers to become truly liberated at all.

Confucius was probably not thinking of feminism when he wrote: "If you want to rule the world, start from your own self and family first."

In union circles, the issue of women workers is beginning to be addressed. However, it is apparent that the major stumbling block lies with the union leaders who still retain a lot of their male chauvinist attitudes and are reluctant to have women share the leadership. If the attitude is not corrected, the unions will find themselves playing a role in the continued repression of working class women. On this front, it seems that the electronics and garment women workers in Hongkong and south Korea have taken the initiative themselves instead of waiting for their brother unionists to grant them some representation.

Only when women workers take up the challenge and organize themselves to address the contradictions and suppression that face them will there be an effective liberation. Until then, they will continue to be manipulated and exploited by different classes and sectors of society, be they men or women, entrepreneurs of unionists, locals or foreigners.

Footnotes

1. Reuters Report, May 26th, 1983.
2. Korea Herald, December 2nd, 1984.
3. Social and Labour Practices of Multinational Enterprises in the Textiles, Clothing and Footwear Industries, International Labour Office, Geneva, 1984.
4. Ibid.
5. Women Workers in Multinational Enterprises in Developing Countries, International Labour Office, Geneva, 1985.
6. Personal interviews with a group of electronics workers in Hongkong in May, 1985.
7. Korea Herald, September 16th, 1984.
8. Same as FN 3.
9. Same as FN 5.
10. Same as FN 3.
11. Asian Exchange, Vol. 3, No. 1, April 1984.
12. Personal interviews with homeworking women in Hongkong.
13. Asia Labour Monitor, Vol. 2 No. 1, February 1985.
14. Ibid.
15. Personal interview with a women labour activist from south Korea in early 1985.
16. American Friends Service Committee Women's Newsletter, Winter, 1981.