Unit 2: Gender issues in the world of work
Emerging gender issues in the Asia Pacific region
Effects of structural adjustment policies
Since the mid-1980s, the main influence on women’s employment has been the impact of recession and structural adjustment. Whatever the long-term benefits, in the short-term these measures have been associated with considerable social distress. There is growing evidence that they have eroded some of women’s hard-won gains and increased their vulnerability to poverty and exploitative conditions. It appears, then, that women rather than men have borne the brunt of structural adjustments in Asia.
Although the recession was less serious and shorter, Asian women were still more likely to be retrenched than men. They have been more vulnerable because of their concentration in sectors most sensitive to international demand conditions and in direct production jobs which fluctuate closely with the actual level of enterprise operations. There is also the prevailing notion that women are secondary earners who are perceived as more dispensable in tight employment situations. In Malaysia, for example, more than half the total number retrenched between 1983 and 1985 were from the two most "feminised" industries¾ electronics and textiles¾ while in administrative services the largest employment cuts were among clerks, where women predominate.
Available data for the mid-1980s to early-1990s indicate higher open unemployment rates for women than for men in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and Sri Lanka. In Pakistan, for instance, the 1990-91 Labour Force Survey shows rural unemployment at 13.8 percent for women and 3.9 percent for men, and urban unemployment at 27.8 percent for women and 5.9 percent for men. In Indonesia, unemployment I creases with educational level for both sexes but the unemployment rate for women with senior high school education or above is almost twice as high as for their male counterparts.
Data on open unemployment are not by themselves indicative of the situation of women workers. This is because both the "discouraged" and "added" worker effects are likely to be stronger for women than for men. Women are more likely than men to be "discouraged" by poor employment prospects and to not actively search for jobs. In Malaysia, census data showed the passive unemployment rate as more than twice as high among women than men, although the active unemployment rate was higher for men. On the other hand, the "additional" worker effect may operate because women have been forced to join the labour market to help maintain household living standards, especially when the men lose their jobs. This phenomenon, which UNICEF terms "invisible adjustment" by women, does not show up in official statistics because most women have been forced into the informal sector.
Structural adjustment has been marked by feminisation of employment, but with important shifts in sectors and status. In almost all countries for which data are available, employment has grown faster for women than for man during structural adjustment, especially in manufacturing, services, trade, tourism and entertainment. In several countries, however, employment in manufacturing grew at a slower pace than in the service-related sectors, with the bulk in non-regular categories as temporary or part-time workers, piece rate workers, seasonal workers, or home-based production workers in subcontracting or putting out systems. Thus, growth in these sectors has often been in the non-formal sector, rather than formal wage employment.
For example, in Pakistan, the trend in the 1980s was one of labour displacement in large-scale manufacturing with women being pushed increasingly into:
There has been some increase in the number of women going into formal employment in community and social services, but the majority have been employed as domestics or have gone into self-employment mainly in trading or hawking or in micro and small-scale production activities. A significant expansion in the scale of prostitution has also been noted, not only in Southeast Asia but also in countries in transition.
Economic liberalisation and deregulation by governments, together with efforts by the private sector to minimise production costs and enhance international competitiveness, have led to a more flexible workforce and the casualisation of employment. To reduce the fixed cost of labour, employers have increasingly resorted to substituting permanent full time wage and salary earners with fixed wages, and fringe benefits by various types of non-regular workers¾ temporary or part-time workers, piece rate workers, seasonal workers, or home-based production workers in subcontracting or putting out systems. The non-regular forms of employment:
There is also evidence of manufacturing establishments keeping women workers in a "trainee" category for relatively long periods, not to provide them with training but for greater employment flexibility and to keep wages low.
This has increased the vulnerability of women workers. Labour flexibility surveys In the Philippines show that the greater the degree of labour casualisation, the higher the proportion of total employment consisting of women and the more vulnerable these women are to exploitative conditions.
Women have also gone into self-employment as a survival strategy, mainly in trading or hawking and domestic service, but also as micro- or small-scale entrepreneurs. Such women tend to be in the unskilled, undifferentiated, ease of entry, low margin businesses that return low rewards for their time and efforts. They face constraints such as:
A distinctive response to the economic crisis in the region has been the entry (both legal and illegal) of Asian women into international markets for contract labour. Demand for men guest workers has slackened due to the slowdown in development construction in the Middle East. It is now the women who have given up hearth and family for work overseas, mainly as housemaids, entertainers (including prostitutes), nurses and helpers in retail shops and restaurants. Many Asian countries have come to rely increasingly on the "comparative advantage of women’s disadvantages".
For example, Filipina women migrant workers outnumber their men counterparts by 12 to 1 in Asian destinations. Similarly, there are more than 3 women migrant workers for every man migrant from Indonesia and about 3 women migrant workers to every 2 men counterparts from Sri Lanka. Thai migrant flows have also become increasingly feminised. Cultural constraints, however, restrict women’s outflows from other South Asian countries.
Women have tended to be disproportionately affected by privatisation, cuts in government spending and downscaling of the public sector. This is because government has been a major employer of women in the region and wages and employment conditions are better on average in the public sector. Also, women tend to be overrepresented in clerical or administrative jobs, which have been the first targets of efficiency or reorganisation measures. The substantial labour shedding associated with these measures has disproportionately reduced opportunities for formal wage employment for women.
For example, in Vietnam and Mongolia the transition to market economies has had harsher effects on women in terms of:
There has also been an accompanying decline in social protection for women in the region. Women have been more adversely affected than men by cutbacks in, or the limited coverage of, social security programmes, including insurance against unemployment old age, sickness, benefits for family support, health care, education, etc. This is so for a number of reasons. Relative to men, women have lower or no entitlements because they are more likely to be in non-regular forms of employment or in the informal sector and to have interrupted periods of employment. Yet, the incomes they earn have become increasingly crucial for family survival. More and more women have become de facto or de jure heads of households. Cutbacks in health care, sickness and maternity benefits have hit women particularly hard because they bear responsibility for family health and because they have longer life expectancy and require support in old age. With increasing proportions of women in the informal sector, coverage through conventional social security schemes, either public or private, is an increasingly inadequate mechanism. In countries in transition in the region, the State’s ability to sustain existing levels of protection has been reduced, while new needs for social protection have emerged, especially among women heads of household. There is evidence that reductions in maternal protection, food subsidies and the quality of health care raised maternal mortality rates in Mongolia.
[This note was prepared from Briefing Note 3.2, "Women at work in Asia and the Pacific - Recent trends and future challenges", in the Briefing Kit on Gender Issues in the World of Work, ILO, Geneva, 1995; and Module 1, "Women at Work in Asia and the Pacific: Situation, Issues and Concerns" in Promotion of Equality of Opportunity and Treatment for Women Workers: an ILO Manual for Asia and the Pacific, ILO/EASMAT, Bangkok, 1994.]
Baden, S. 1997. "Recession and structural adjustment’s impact on women’s work in selected developing regions." In Date-Bah, E. (ed.), Promoting Gender Equality at Work: Turning Vision into Reality, ILO: Geneva.
Baden, S. 1993. The Impact of Recession and Structural Adjustment on Women’s Work in Developing and Developed Countries. Equality for Women in Employment: An Interdepartmental Project IDP Women/WP-19. ILO: Geneva.
Joekes, S. 1989. Engendering Adjustment for the 1980s. Report of the Commonwealth Expert Group on Women and Structural Adjustment. Commonwealth Secretariat Publications: London.
Lim, L.L. 1993. "The feminisation of labour in the Asia-Pacific Rim countries: from contributing to economic dynamism to bearing the brunt of structural adjustment." In Ogawa, N., G.W. Jones and J.G. Williamson (eds.), Human resources in development along the Asia-Pacific Rim. Oxford University Press: Singapore.
For further information, please contact the South-East
Asia and the Pacific Multidisciplinary
Advisory Team (SEAPAT) at Tel: +63.2.815.2354
or Fax: +63.2.812.6143
E-mail:
seapat@ilo.org