Health, Women's Work, and Industrialization - Center for Gender in ...

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controls as physical plants are upgraded.
however, will not be seen for some time.
The effects of these actions,
The research shows that, indeed, the forces impinging upon one's health
and behavior are numerous. For electronics workers in Singapore and
Malaysia, the technical means of production, the social organization, and
the patterns of reproducti on combi ne to i nfl uence workers' health. Whi 1 e
particular exposures have specific health impact, the results of the
combination of exposures differs according to the job being done. At the
same ti me, the workers experi ence simil ar pressures from factory di sci pl i ne
and similar conditions for their reproduction. The family is a pivotal
institution in providing for reproduction. The state plays a key, if
indirect, role through both social and economic development policies.
Insofar as health is a reflection of a society's potential to reproduce,
the study has shown that, in Singapore and Malaysia, workers' health is
decreased by their contribution to the total economic development strategy
but that the restoration of health is privatized in the family. The
struggle to maintain equilibrium is centered at the workplace.
Insofar as the study suggests the importance of subjective factors, the
changes in the labor force must be noted. The electronics workforce in
Singapore and Malaysia is still made up largely of young, single women who
lack educational and work experience; however, they are getting older,
getting married, and becoming more educated. Many workers have been working
as long as the industry has been there. In that time they have become wives
and mothers and stayed in the workforce. They have experienced
retrenchments and, consequently, changes in companies. As forward linkages
occurred in the production process, many have gained more confidence about
themselves -- in their ability to find employment, to get along with people
of di fferent backgrounds, and to understand the "games" pl ayed at the
workplace. They have also come to realize that while their families and
economic burdens have grown, their job opportunities have not. They have
acquired only a few transferrable skills. While the older workers tended to
have completed, at best, lower secondary schools, many of the newer ones
have completed secondary education, especially in Malaysia. The older
workers descri be the newer ones as bei ng more stubborn and choosy -- that
they accept authority and direction much less readily. More of the younger
workers al so have hopes of getting out. More of them enroll in courses to
acquire new skills to the extent allowed by shiftwork.
Working experiences, coupled with changes in SOCiety, have brought
changes to women's outlooks. Increasingly, work is no longer a temporary,
pre-marriage phenomenon. While the economic need to work is still the
primary moti vati on, women increasi ngly real i ze that work al so means bei ng
valued as productive beings. Thus, values central to capitalist development
are becoming internalized. Working on the assembly line with mixed ethnic
groups has begun to break down the colonial legacy of ethnic segregation on
the one hand, and to build a new multi-cultural working class on the other.
The interpersonal relationships found at work constitute a new form of