Women workers in the region
Hard Labour: Women Workers in the Asia Pacific Region
By Australia Asia Worker Links Women's Committee
33 pp. $5.
Reviewed by Pip Hinman
Over a two-year period, the Australia Asia Worker Links Women's Committee have conducted surveys, workplace discussions and interviews with a range of women workers from Australia and the Asia Pacific region. This publication, in magazine format, presents a snippet of the lives of 24 women workers, as well as giving a regional overview of the movement of women into the industrial work forces of the Asia Pacific.
The interview format allows the reader to identify a number of common themes. The interviews tell what life is like, not only for these 24 women, but for millions of others like them. A picture emerges which suggests that capitalism's economic crisis has similar repercussions on women's lives in both the underdeveloped and developed worlds: low pay, the constant threat of losing one's job, sexual harassment and restrictions on the right to organise.
In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, a spirit of courage and determination emerges as we are introduced to Karol, who has managed to break into the male-dominated building industry in Melbourne, Lakshmi, who works for peasants' rights in the free trade zones of Sri Lanka, and Neila, who organises shop workers in the Philippines.
Hard Labour is a useful introduction for people seeking to understand more about women workers in the Asia Pacific region.