Transnational Tradeswomen

View trailer from a work in progress on the Bracero Program

Directors, Gilbert Gonzalez and Vivian Price
contact us at gggonzal@uci.edu and vprice@csudh.edu

Countries featured in the film

India

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Transnational Tradeswomen is a road trip, set off by the 1995 Women's Conference in Beijing, that explores the situations of women construction laborers in Asia.

Women in the global north and south are having trouble working in construction. In the south, development often increases unemployment of the very poor, further exacerbated by mechanization. This is compounded by the "race to the bottom," which propels migration of laborers, recruited by employers wishing to pay yet lower wages. While many women in Asia have worked in construction for centuries, they are largely confined to manual jobs, rather than skilled work. Skilled construction work in both the global north and south is mostly thought to be "inappropriate" for women. But what really counts as "skill" and how is gender used to categorize these jobs?

An early scene in the film was shot at the Beijing conference on Women in 1995. In a workshop on the construction industry, women from the US, Denmark, Bermuda, Japan, Afghanistan, India and Thailand contrast the issues facing women laborers in each of their countries. Subsequent sections follow the director's footsteps as she travels to Thailand, India, Singapore, and Taiwan, to construction sites ,workers' homes, workers associations, meeting with scholars and activists. Segments on Pakistan and Japan were shot by filmmakers in those countries who collaborated on the project.

The Japanese segment includes Keiko, a woman plumber, addressing the way employers now treat her since she had her daughter. Following Keiko, a truck driver speaks about sexism and self-pride, and a 65 year old woman carpenter takes a moment from climbing on scaffolding to compare the satisfaction she gets remodeling a house with the pleasure of 'dressing kimono.'

The story this film tells disturbs the notion many people hold, that modernization, education and technology result in gender equality and the alleviation of poverty. It also raises the question: does the gendering of work in construction provide a transnational connection among the women who work in this industry?

Transnational Tradeswomen (2006) 62 min.

Outside US, contact Vivian Price at vprice@csudh.edu