By Melanie Sjoberg
The 1990s have been hailed as the beginning of the "Asian century". We find feature articles in journals like Far East Economic Review titled "Getting in Tune with Asia", and "Dawn of a New Generation". There is no doubt that dramatic changes are occurring in the region, including rates of growth unprecedented in capitalist economic development for a century.
The pundits of the economic press revel in the dynamics of investment, the excitement of another huge opportunity. But how are these changes impacting upon the lives of ordinary people in the region, particularly women?
Asia's share of world merchandise trade has been rising rapidly during the 1980s and now comprises 24% of world exports and 21% of imports. More worrying for the multinational corporations of the US and Western Europe is the extent of trade within the region.
Of all Asian exports in 1992, 60% of agricultural goods, 82% of mining and 40% of manufactured goods were traded within the region. This perceived imbalance forced the lengthy GATT negotiations, as the US and Europe attempted to force Asian countries to open up their markets further to Western trade and investment. This has been particularly evident in relation to China and Vietnam.
During the '80s China's GDP growth rate averaged 8-9%, with the southern provinces such as Guandung and Fujian being two to three times greater. Foreign capital investment amounted to more than $100 million in 1993, primarily from overseas Chinese in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
NIC model
Most people would be familiar with the economic success stories of the newly industrialising countries (NICs) in the region. In the 1980s, countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have attempted to emulate their example. More recently, China and Vietnam have been implementing some of the same methods.
The general principle shaping these efforts has been an emphasis on specialisation in export-oriented manufacturing and the establishment of some form of "free trade zones". There has also been strong state control over trade unions, wages and public consumption, in order to guarantee low wage rates.
Throughout the region, trade unions are either non-existent or government controlled and thereby ineffective as genuine workers' organisations. In South Korea, the National Council of Korean Trade Unions was destroyed during the US occupation and replaced by company or plant unions under the banner of the "Free Korean Trade Union Federation".
In Singapore, the union movement was smashed prior to independence. The People's Action Party established its own trade union congress. In Indonesia, the SPSI operates under the auspices of the Suharto dictatorship, and attempts to establish an alternative independent trade union body are being severely repressed.
China has only the flimsy shell of worker organisations, and even these are not allowed in the burgeoning export zones of the southern provinces. Where trade unions do exist in China, they are often in the contradictory situation of being led by an official who is also a director of an enterprise and a Communist Party official.
Patriarchal structures
These circumstances have tended to create an excessively harsh burden on women. Multinational corporations have placed a major emphasis on the employment of women, particularly in the textile and electronic industries. Women have been viewed, inappropriately, as docile, willing workers with inherent attributes which enable them to carry out fine work — the so-called nimble fingers advantage.
Employers are also keen to exploit the legacy of the patriarchal family structure. Swasti Mitter in Common Fate, Common Bond points out: "Employment policies of multinational corporations shamelessly take advantage of the sexual power relations within the family home. A lot of women are deliberately recruited by multinational corporations as daughters whose fathers have a stake in their working. The men who want or need their daughters or sisters [income] will allow poor wages and conditions to prevail as long as the managers supervise the girls and keep them pure."
Women have become the fastest-growing segment of the manufacturing labour force in most of Asia, as well as the lowest paid. They also endure the worst conditions. In South Korea, for instance, women earn 50% of the male wage. In Singapore it is 73%.
The vast majority of women workers in the manufacturing sector are brought in from rural regions, have little knowledge of their rights and are housed in company-provided dormitories. After working up to 12 hour days, they are then locked in their rooms until the next shift. Talking and toilet breaks are usually forbidden, and women fear getting pregnant as it means dismissal.
Informal sector
Large-scale agricultural production has displaced farming and traditional community-based production, while the rapid growth of export manufacturing has increased employment options in the urban centres. In the last two decades this has created dramatic population shifts from rural to urban areas throughout Asia. This impacts on the economic independence of women, who previously may have taken responsibility for commodity and craft activities, including the marketing of products.
Although work in the informal sector has been estimated to contribute approximately 50% of global gross national product, it is not accounted for in any mainstream economic analysis, causing women's contribution to become invisible. Yet, women trading in the informal sector are now 54% of the active population in Thailand and 50% in Indonesia.
These unwaged activities involve street trading; food, herb, medicine and craft stalls; domestic services; prostitution; and scavenging. Street trading is a survival mechanism through which people provide each other with goods and services through a non-profit-oriented system. It means that women are working harder — rising early to purchase goods from markets, cooking, serving then staying late to clean — somehow fitting in domestic and child-caring duties.
Governments, however, are not allowing this form of trading to continue unhampered. Indonesia has imposed severe anti-trading policies using the police and military to physically destroy stalls. South Korea pushed poor people out of the city region before the Olympics in 1988, and the Ramos government in the Philippines is bulldozing shanty towns. In Vietnam, women producing garments in the informal sector are being displaced by cheap imports of second grade products form Hong Kong.
In Indonesia, the Suharto government has implemented an anti-poverty program which is meant to alleviate hardship for those living in the informal sector. The government has received donations of $100 million from the World Bank and $200 million from Japan's Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund. The supposed recipients, however, are not gaining. Individual women receive loans to help develop their craft projects, but are required to repay upward of 50% interest in short time frames.
Resistance
Research by Jeong-Lim Nam on the participation of women workers in struggle in South Korea provides strong evidence that women are consciously organising and challenging the harsh conditions. She states that the concentration of young women in the export zones work force acts as a motivation for their struggles against horrible working conditions and exposure to sexual discrimination.
Nam points to the facts that in the early '80s women's union membership was higher than men's, and that 11 of the 13 most notable industrial disputes were led exclusively by women workers.
In other countries, the story is similar. In 1991 women workers in one of Korea's largest cosmetic factories launched a strike for a 25% pay increase. They were harassed and beaten by a 2000-strong contingent of riot police.
In Indonesia a major action against the oppression of housemaids was held on International Women's Day in 1990 following the release of a story about a young women who was brutally beaten and locked up by her employers.
The reaction by Filipino workers against the recent death of Flor Contemplacion, a housemaid in Singapore, also attests to the willingness of women workers to fight back.
In addition to the frequent general prohibition against workers organising, women are subjected to further forms of repression. Women activists in the region report significant levels of rape and sexual abuse by police and military personnel.
Women organising throughout the region have identified these issues as central to challenging the effects of rapid industrialisation on the NIC model. Dita Sari from the Centre for Working Class Struggle in Indonesia, while visiting Australia in March, discussed the need for an alliance with trade union and women's groups in Indonesia. Women activists in Australia can help by encouraging support from our own trade unions for independent trade unions throughout the region.
[This is an abridged version of a talk presented to the Campaigning for Democratic Socialism conference held in Melbourne at Easter.]