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CASE STUDIES
Women Workers in Malaysia
This session on Malaysian women workers was led by Mrs.
Renee Lee and Dr. Hing Ai Yun. (Mrs. Lee is a teacher at
During this session, the two speakers presented statistical
figures relating to the proportion of women workers in the various sectors in
the country as well as their working conditions.
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Emphasis was placed on women in the manufacturing sector,
particularly those women workers in the electronic and textile factories. This area was highlighted because the
majority of women workers are situated in these factories.
At the end of the input session, the participants were given
the opportunity to pose questions to a worker friend who shared with the
participants her personal work experience in a factory.
Dr. Hing made some observations
such as: more urban women leave the workforce after marriage; childbirth affect
the female labour force; most rural women earn less than M$400; and there are
less women workers in the production/ skilled industries.
To improve present conditions faced by women, she suggested
that there is a need to improve:
i) union leadership/formation;
ii) childcare facilities at workplaces;
iii) concerted efforts to strengthen labour unions.
Mrs. Lee drew attention to the increasing participation of women
in the electronics industry because Asian women are advertised as docile,
gentle, cheap (they require only 1/5 of the wages paid in US/Japan).
She said in the working class, women's and men's struggles
are not separate. It is difficult to
create a working class consciousness to tackle the problem of exploitation.
From a Christian point of view, there is a call to work for
the poor and the oppressed and the issue of exploitation is subtle and urgent.
Seminars and forums at university level are far too many and
seldom come down to the grassroot level.
Humanization does not happen at the intellectual level but at the level
of the working class, she adds.
Case study by
Dr. Hing and Mrs. Lee
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Men's
Response to Women's Struggle for Change
Women are oppressed not merely by the behaviour of
individual men but by the whole social system which allows certain type of
behaviour (in which relationships through which women are oppressed by men) to
occur. This was spoken by Mr. Lakshman Gunasekera, the General
Secretary of Sri Lanka SCM.
In the
It is the Sri Lankan culture that justifies male domination
there. In the Indian society, the rigid society code imposed by the religious
class strictly limits the role of women.
Even Buddhism has the
same approach to woman. To attain
nirvana, woman must first become man.
In Christianity, Adam's fall is blamed on Eve. In the church structure at the parish level,
for example, women's duties are only to clean the pews, keep the church clean,
see to the floral arrangement, but how many women are involved in the decision making
of the church?
Capitalism and industrialisation have made the situation
worse. The stereotyping of woman as
wife, mother and housewife leads to seeing woman as a supplementary earner.
Women did not get jobs as a result of their own struggle but
because of the needs of a capitalist economy which require labour to make
profit.
So, through the social conditioning through education,
religion, family customs and upbringing, women have been brought up as
inferior. They are expected to find
fulfilment in low-paid jobs and in feminine jobs such as nurses, rubber tappers, etc.
The