Breaking through the barriers
This is the first of three articles about "Women and Work" in Thailand written for the Kitakyushu Forum on Asian Women's foreign correspondent programme for 1995-6, which were published in Volume 5 of the collected reports in December 1996.
The Bangkok Post, a major English-language daily newspaper, regularly runs color
supplements celebrating special events, anniversaries and birthdays of important com-
panies and institutions in the nation. Always prominent in these are photos of the senior
management, and what is surprising to the farang (European foreign) eye, is not so much
that women are featured prominently in such photos, but the positions they hold. They are
seldom if ever at the absolute top of management, but they hold a significant number of the
very senior positions, particularly in finance and other "economic" areas.
In my home country-Australia and in much of the Western world, such positions are the
least likely to be held by women. Most often women directed to "softer" posts; such as, in
personnel.
This focus on commerce and economics is just one factor which sets Thai women apart
from their sisters in most of rest of the world. In the Asian-Pacific region, Thailand has
the highest rate of female participation in the work force. In 1990, Thai women accounted
for 47% of the total labor force or about 52% of the female population. Among the 15 to
19 age group, more females than males are employed, a factor which has been attributed
to the demand for domestic helpers, factory and service industry workers in urban areas.
This relative equality of involvement in employment; however, does not extend to
equality of opportunity. Women are hugely over-represented in lowly-paid (or unpaid)
work with few chances of advancement. They are also concentrated in "female ghettos"
in industries; such as, clothing and footwear and electronics. They also find it difficult or
impossible to enter many other desirable areas of employment, particularly jobs which
offer real decision-making power and influence.
A survey of educational statistics suggests such segregation is likely to continue with
girls and women once again participating almost equally with men but in different fields.
For example, in formal vocational and technical education, women make up just 3% of
enrollment in industrial mechanics courses, but 97% in home economics and 90% in
commerce. In universities, women predominate in humanities and social sciences but are
heavily under-represented in law, engineering and agriculture.
The unpaid work mentioned above includes not only family housework, which in
Thailand as in most of the rest of the world remains unrecognized, but also agricultural
labor which still provides 58% of female employment (down from 86% 30 years ago). Only
one in seven of these workers receive cash payment for their work, and the pace of
development in agriculture has greatly disadvantaged these women. Both local attitudes
and those of outsiders engaged in development work has tended to ensure that new
technology has taken hold in men's areas of agriculture, or at least that men usually receive
the training to use it. Women have usually remained in traditional, less-productive work
with corresponding low rewards.
As in rest of the world, Thai women are also often subject to the "double burden". Not
only do they work outside the home, but they are also left with primary or total responsibil-
ity for housework and child care. A recent study found that in agricultural production, the
working hours of men and women averaged 2,294 and 1,644 hours respectively. But when
time for housework was added, the women's average working year spanned 3,894 hours,
more than 40% longer than men's. Such effects may be ameliorated for upper and middle
class women by the avability of domestic servants and extended family labor, but this
is once again built on poorly-paid or unpaid female labor.
Returning to the articles with which this item began, it appears that while the women
pictured in these glossy publications have come a long way, their lives are not representative of the bulk of Thai women's. They are working in something of another female
enclave, albeit a well paid one in a field which is traditionally dominated by men. While
Thai women have a degree of access to the work force (and thus relative economic
independence) which many women in the Asia-Pacific region might envy, they are still at
the very beginning of winning the right to 'develop their full potential, both physically and
mentally intellectually'. The government has made support of this right a target in the 1992
National Declaration on Women.
Any comments or questions, please email me
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