SOSC 102 U

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SOSC 102 U

• Lecture Note 10
• Gender and Work in East Asia
• Gender and Taiwans Development

Chu Yin-wah in Chow, Ch. 3 Esther Ngan-ling Chow
and Ray-may Hsung in Chow, Ch. 4
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Different impacts on gender and development in
the four tigers (1)

• 1. Industrialization from the 1950s/1960s
  contributed to the increase in the overall female
  labor force participation rate. But the rates in
  the four countries were different
• Up to the 1980s, the portion of women in
  manufacturing was higher than that of men in Hong
  Kong, Spore, and Taiwan. While in South Korea,
  the portion of men in manufacturing was higher
  than that of women

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Different impacts on gender and development in
the four tigers (2)

• 2. Economic restructuring from the 1980s impacted
  on women of these four countries differently
• Hong Kong Women between 50 and 64 years of age
  were moving out of labor market.
• Taiwan, Spore and S. Korea women of the same
  age category were increasingly their involvement
  in paid employment

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Explain the differences (1)

• 1. Why do men rather than women dominate South
  Koreas manufacturing sector?
• Industrial development in South Korea from the
  mid-1960s was concentrated geographically in a
  few cities. Workers needed to make a long journey
  from countryside to these industrial cities so as
  to capture the expanding employment opportunities
  in industry. This worked against women because
  they are generally less geographically mobile
• Hong Kong and Spore are geographically compact,
  while Taiwans industries have tended to be
  dispersed widely in the western part of the island

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Explain the differences (2)

• Why were the Hong Kong women in manufacturing
  sector affected most severely from economic
  restructuring?

• Hong Kongs Economic Restructuring in the 1980s
  the decline of labor-intensive manufactures,
  which had provided many job opportunities for
  women with low skills in the past decades
  development of service sector from the 1980s

• The bulk of small- and medium-sized firm tried to
  reduce their costs of production by taking
  advantage of Chinas open-door policy and
  transferring manufacturing production to Mainland
  Chinathis explains the drastic decline of Hong
  Kongs female employment in manufacturing from
  the early 1980s

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Explain the differences (3)

• Government policies matter

• The Hong Kong government has adopted a
  noninterventionist industrial policy and provided
  very limited industrial support

• In the course of economic restructuring, the
  governments of Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea
  have devised strategies and injected resources to
  upgrade the technological levels and to maintain
  the viability of the manufacturing
  industriesthese strategies have slowed down the
  speed with which manufacturing has withered and
  allowed a more gradual displacement of the
  labor-intensive industries and their workers

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Explain the differences (4)

• Why didnt the service sector create enough
  employment to compensate for the loss in the
  manufacturing sector?

• The service sector is looking for workers who are
  young and with feminine demeanor and basic
  literacy. Former factory women do not fit the
  criteriathe structure of labor market is gendered

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Images on factory workers and sales
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Gender and Development in Taiwan

• Case study on gender and work in transnational
  corporations (TNCs) in Taiwan
• Gender relations are embedded in the
  organizational structure, processes, and
  practices as a constitutive partthe Gendered
  Embodiment Perspective
• Organizations such as TNCs are not just places of
  production, they are also areas of reproducing
  gender ideology

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Higher-level positions filled by external
recruitment of qualified personnel. Few women are
in the rank. 1) a result of homosocial
reproduction (male managers favored male workers
to be promoted) 2) the superwomen (???) label
Labor process the absolute classification
between mens stronger vs. womens weaker
bodythis concept determines different job
assignments for male and female
workers Lower-level positions filled by internal
succession and promotion. The average educational
level of male workers was slightly above high
school graduate and that of female workers was
around high schoolwomen sacrificed their
education to work to support family and/or allow
their brothers to have more education
Recruitment of entry-level jobs for high school
graduates Female workers young (above 16 years
old) and singlesometimes marriage ban is
applied (to agree to resign once getting married)
No particular demand for male workers
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Sexuality and Labor Process

• 1. The division of labor between male and female
  workers is set up by the concept of gendered body
  (womens weaker body, women with nimble
  fingers, docility, and manual dexteritydesirable
  traits for doing assembly-line jobs)
• 2. Male managers treat attractive and
  unattractive female workers differentlyunattracti
  ve women are ignored
• 3. Womens capacities for menstruation,
  pregnancy, childbirth, breast-feeding, and child
  rearing are stigmatized and controlled