Background

Under-represented voices of female workers

Women make up the majority of the workforce driving China’s manufacturing industries. It would seem that, in coastal areas like Shenzhen where there is a relative shortage of labour, employers are unable to be as selective as they used to be in their hiring practices.

However strong social norms prevail which seldom associate women with professional success, and dismiss them as being erratic and driven by emotion. Women are highly under-represented amongst academics, lawyers, and government officials. It is a great challenge to labour NGOs and activists to make space for greater women’s participation in workers’ struggle.

Awareness of gender not only in number of females

AMRC has done an evaluation on a project of women workers’ empowerment with our partners in South China in 2008. It is found that quite a high proportion of the worker participants of our programme, the organizers and even the leaders of the NGOs were women. That did not guarantee better awareness of gender discrimination at workplace nor more attention to problems encountered by migrant women workers such as sexual harassment, pregnancy and abortion at the workplace. The situation is no more optimistic in the organizing of injured and occupational diseases workers. The spouses of occupational disease and injured workers were subordinates in the family. These victimized women were not yet able to formulate their own demands independently from their husbands’. Pregnant workers that were poisoned by exposure to cadmium or injured due to their work could not find choices other than abortion. It was also found that gender awareness is missing in the legal rights advocacy and case handling of the NGOs. From the points of view of our partner organizations, they also expressed their difficulties in empowering women workers to fight for better working conditions and to defend their legal rights. Since then, AMRC has made an attempt to design a gender awareness training with partner organizations.

Needs from the ground

During the first half year of 2009, AMRC did a needs assessment with partners in Guangdong province. In total 36 worker organizers from 5 labour organizations took part in the process. Among them, 25 were women organizers. From their responses to the questionnaires and in the group discussions, we have made the following observations: 1.Labour NGOs or services centers have difficulties in mobilizing women workers; 2. Organizers have basic knowledge of gender issues but they lack practical experiences and skills; 3. Organizations are not used to planning and developing their work and programme to cater for different needs and situations of different genders. Based on these observations, we are developing a gender training course that puts more emphasis on practical skills and strategies in integrating gender into labour leadership programmes.

During November 27th to 28th of 2009, AMRC conducted a “Gender Awareness Training to Labour Organizations" in collaboration with Labour Education and Service Network (LESN), and China Working Women Network (CWWN), targeting labour organizations which have opened services centres for workers in the Pearl River Delta. There were totally 16 participants, 11 females and 4 males from eight organizations. Ms. Zhang Qi, who is a gender expert working for the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, was also invited to share a historical background of the feminist movement and advocacy strategy of women’ groups in China. An interactive approach was adopted in the training such as using small group discussions, games, role play, debate and movie screening.

Change of perception and attitude of partner NGOs staff members

Through this training, understanding has been built to a certain extent on:

O         mobility of workers and family roles hinder migrant women workers organizing

O         reflection of gender bias or blindness in current work approaches used by labour organizations

O         gender issues are matters related to both women and men workers

O         realizing a lack of knowledge of organizing on the needs and motivations of women workers in participating labour organizing

O         historical background of the women movement in modern China (post-People’s Republic of China)

The participants of this training showed a better understanding and deeper empathy regarding why female workers are less active and less assertive in defending their labour rights. Before the training, they were not sensitive to the differences between male and female migrant workers. They provided the same activities, labour education and legal aid services to all workers, but only or most likely male workers showed up in their centres or activities. The NGOs staff member always saw the lower responsiveness of women as due to the choices or passive personality of women, which NGO staff could do nothing to change. After the training and after practicing the vulnerability and capacity assessment, they realized that their work was centered too much on legal issues, which is not appealing to most female women workers. Since female migrant workers are highly mobile relative to their male counterparts, they tended to tolerate the injustices, or use other tactics, or just jump into another job if any dispute happened. The first training did not bring them any immediate solution but it stimulated the NGO workers to think from a different angle. Mostly importantly, NGO workers realized the limitations of their usual practices and were willing to look for new alternatives.

According to the post training assessment, 80% of the participants found this training satisfactory and helpful. After this training, two participating organizations in Guangzhou replicated the training inside their centres.

Women’s rights and gender equality go beyond legal rights

Five months later, during April 21st to 23rd 2010, AMRC conducted a follow-up training with the same group of participants, on exercises and skills-sharing to use gender perspectives in every-day jobs. During this workshop, AMRC shared the experiences of women workers’ organizing in South Korea, Malaysia and Hong Kong to the participants. The breakthroughs made during the training are:

l              The protection of women rights in the law is limited and distant from the everyday lives of migrant female workers. Through some exercises of role play, the participants talked from the point of views of female workers, revealing that the most disturbing issues were the safety threat, such as the harassment and their safety in the dormitory and the attitude of the management, which are experiences different from male workers and are beyond the coverage of labour law.

l              The gender awareness training for workers and volunteers of NGOs is isolated from the main programme of the NGOs. After learning some principles of gender equality, workers and volunteers do not have opportunities to practice or experience this alternative way of understanding gender roles. There was a hot debate whether a separate group for women workers is needed or whether gender perspectives can be integrated into an overall work plan without a designated working group.

l              There are strong biases on gender issues within the partner organizations. Promoting gender equality at the workplace is still regarded as a less important task than other bread and butter issues. One male participant pointed out that talking about gender is being misunderstood as a threat to male staff and male workers. Working together and forming alliances are necessary under this subculture, and it is also important to support the female staff in a male dominant organization.

After this follow-up training, two more organizations in Shenzhen reformed their small groups of women workers again. All the participants of this workshop set up an e-group for regular communication and mutual support in taking steps forward to promote gender equality at the workplace. Moreover, all the eight participating organizations have planned to recruit their volunteers to join a competition of gender awareness-promoting product design. This exercise aims at keeping the momentum of putting their learning into practice. The winning product design of the competition will be produced and distributed alongside their outreaching activities in the industrial zones in Shenzhen, Dongguan, Guangzhou and Panyu.

This is still an ongoing process. At this stage, we have observed the positive change in the attitudes of the NGO workers. We hope and believe that they will be more sensitive to gender issues, develop more initiatives to recruit female migrant workers and increase the representation of women in the leadership of grassroots worker organizations.