Transnational Tradeswomen  
  Thailand  
 

Thailand's construction workforce includes at least about fourteen percent women. Many of the workers are seasonal laborers who do rice farming during the wet season, and come to the urban centers for wage work in the dry weather. Development projects and the difficulties facing farmers have increased the pressure to enter the cash economy. Thailand's economy in general is feeling the impact of globalization and the "race to the bottom" of employer's quest for low wages and weak unions. Many workers from Myanmar are increasingly finding jobs in Thailand.

Links and Resources .

Stills from the film:

 
 
 
A woman works on a housing project in Bangkok. She, like many of the workers in the construction industry in Thailand, comes from the Northeast section of the country, Isan. Jin does work typically seen as skilled masonry work. She often works for and with family members.  
     
   
Not the best copy of this picture-- but for now, here's a photo sent to me by a researcher from Myanmar of women, men, and children, working in construction in her country.    
     
     
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Transnational Tradeswomen (2006) 62 min.
 
For US distribution, contact Women Make Movies at
http://www.wmm.com 212-925-0606.
Outside US, contact Vivian Price at vprice@csudh.edu
 
     
 

Winner: CINE Golden Eagle award, 2006

  
  Screenings: Asian Studies Conference, Japan 2006; International Visual Sociology Association, Urbino, 2006.  
     
  For University Libraries OUTSIDE the US ONLY  
 

Sales: Dvd-R $190. Email vprice@csudh.edu for shipping rates, address, and any other information. International purchasers ONLY click the Buy Now button below and purchase the film using Paypal. If you are in the US, you must go through Women Make Movies

 

  
 
 
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  Contact me at vprice@csudh.edu to find out how to produce a translation of this film. The Japanese translation is currently available.  
 
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?
 
 
       
     
Links      
       
Stephen Ogunlana, Unni Rost, Lilia Austriaco, Kyoko Kusakabe, and Govind Keller, Thai Women Construction Workers, Gender Studies Monograph 3, AIT, 1993. (AIT/CUC-PP)

The research is a joint collaboration effort between the Division of Structural Engineering and Construction, Human Settlement Development (GENDEV). It is sponsored by the Canadian International Development Agency's Asian Institute of Technology - Canadian Universities Consortium /Partnership Programme. B210,000.