WOMEN, POVERTY AND IDEOLOGY IN ASIA Also by Haleh Afshar *IRAN: A Revolution in Turmoil (editor) WOMEN, WORK AND IDEOLOGY (editor) *WOMEN, STATE AND IDEOLOGY (editor) Also by Bina Agarwal MECHANISATION IN INDIAN AGRICULTURE COLD HEARTHS AND BARREN SLOPES: The Woodfuel Crisis in the Third World STRUCTURES OF PATRIARCHY: State, Community and Household in Modernising Asia (editor) *Also published by Macmillan Women, Poverty and Ideology in Asia Contradictory Pressures, Uneasy Resolutions Edited by Haleh Afshar Department of Politics University of York and Bina Agarwal Institute of Economic Growth Delhi, India M MACMILLAN © Haleh Afshar and Bina Agarwal 1989 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WC1E 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1989 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Women, poverty and ideology in Asia: contradictory pressures, uneasy resolutions. 1. Asia. Society. Role of women I. Afshar, Haleh, 1944- II. Agarwal, Bina 305.4'2'095 ISBN 978-0-333-44409-2 ISBN 978-1-349-20757-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20757-2 Contents List of Tables vi Preface vii Notes on the Editors and Contributors viii Introduction Haleh Afshar and Bina Agarwal 1 1 Purdah and Poverty in Pakistan Farida Shaheed 17 2 Women in the Work and Poverty Trap in Iran Haleh Afshar 43 3 Women, Land and Ideology in India Bina Agarwal 70 4 Petty Trading and Gender Segregation in Urban South India Johanna Lessinger 99 5 The Ideology of Femininity and Women's Work in a Fishing Community of South India Kalpana Ram 128 6 Internal Colonisation and the Fate of Female Divers in Cheju Island, South Korea Hae-Joang Cho 148 7 Women's Work, Male Domination and Controls over Income among Plantation Workers in Sri Lanka Rachel Kurian 178 8 Export-Oriented Industries and Women Workers in Sri Lanka Kumudhini Rosa 196 9 Poverty, Ideology, and Women Export Factory Workers in South-East Asia Gillian H. C. Foo and Linda Y. C. Lim 212 Index 235 v List of Tables 1.1 Female labour force by major industry, 1961-81 24 1.2 Female labour force by major occupational groups, 1961-81 25 1.3 Distribution of pieceworkers by work organisation and daily income 30 1.4 Distribution of women workers by their percentage contribution to monthly household earnings 31 1.5 Distribution of women workers by differences in male and female aggregate earnings within the family 32 1.6 Monthly earnings from home-based piecework from outside employment 33 1.7 Distribution of pieceworkers by age group and opinions on purdah observance 34 3.1 Women's customary access to land in India 76 3.2 Marriage location and post-marital residence in India 81 3.3 Percentage of rural population below poverty line 91 5.1 Average incomes of women in untrained work 143 8.1 Minimum wage levels determined by GCEC Wages Board 204 vi Preface Working together on this book, with scholars dispersed across four continents, has been a difficult, often taxing, but in the end a rewarding and worthwhile experience. Conceived and initiated in 1986, the book has grown through meetings, correspondence and international calls between the contributors and us over the past two years. As editors, we have also visited some of the authors, and have met together in England and India several times to pull together the threads of the arguments that bind this volume. While most of the contributors are academics by profession, all are also active feminists, and many have been involved in long, difficult, and sometimes dangerous struggles against measures that condemn large numbers of women to subordination and poverty. In many senses, the interrelationships between ideology, economy and gen der, as examined here, are in the nature of explorations, and we hope that the readers will carry the debate forward through the specific areas of their work and action. We are grateful to the authors for comments on the introduction, although responsibility for the final version is ours alone. We would also like to thank Maurice Dodson and our families without whose constant support, help and encouragement this book would never have been completed. HALEH AFSHAR BINA AGARWAL vii Notes on the Editors and Contributors Haleh Afshar was born and raised in Iran, where she worked as a civil servant and a journalist. She teaches in the Department of Politics and the Centre for Women's Studies at the University of York. She is currently working with Muslim immigrant women in West Yorkshire and has edited Women, Work and Ideology (1985), Women, State and Ideology (1987) and Iran: a Revolution in Turmoil (1985). Bina Agarwal is a Professor at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. She was educated at the universities of Cambridge and Delhi. She has been a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, and a Research Fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit, both at the University of Sussex. Her extensive writings include articles on technological change in agriculture, the political economy of the woodfuel and environment crisis, poverty and the position of women in India and Asia, and several books: Cold Hearths and Barren Slopes: The Woodfuel Crisis in the Third World (1986), Structures of Patriarchy: State, Community and Household in Mod ernising Asia (ed., 1988) and Mechanisation in Indian Agriculture (1983). She is currently a member of the Commonwealth Expert Group on Structural Adjustment and Women. She is also active in the women's movement and the environment movement in India. Hae-Joang Cho teaches Cultural Anthropology, Korean Society and Gender Studies at the University of Yonsei, Seoul, South Korea. She is a graduate of History from Yonsei University and has a PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is actively engaged in the feminist movement in Korea and is a member of a group called 'To hana-iii Munwha' (Alternative Culture). She is currently working on a book with a feminist perspective tentatively entitled 'Women and Men in Korea'. Gillian Hwei-Chuan Foo is a consultant on family planning program mes in Bangladesh. She is a Malaysian who graduated from Benning ton College and has a PhD in Population Planning from the Universi- Vlll Notes on the Editors and Contributors ix ty of Michigan in 1987. She has worked with international family planning agencies in Malaysia and Thailand. Rachel Kurian is a Lecturer in the Labour and Development Programme at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. Her research has been on the position of women in plantations in the Caribbean and Asia, on which she has published a book, Women Workers in the Sri Lankan Plantation Sector: An Historical and Contemporary Analysis (1982) and is currently working on a book on women and plantations in the Caribbean, with special reference to Trinidad and Barbados. Since 1982 she has had field experience in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Barbados, Trinidad, Ecuador and Colombia. Johanna Lessinger is a Research Associate at the Southern Asian Institute, Columbia University, in New York. She is a social anthro pologist and a political activist. Her major interests are in politics, economic behaviour and women's activism in Third World societies. She has done research in the Caribbean, India and among Indian immigrants in the United States. Her most recent work is an edited volume Perspectives in US Marxist Anthropology, produced with David Hakken for Westview Press. She has taught Anthropology and Women's Studies. Linda Yuen-Ching Lim teaches at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is a Singaporean with degrees in Economics from the University of Cambridge (BA), Yale (MA) and Michigan (PhD 1978). She has taught at Swarthmore College and the National University of Singapore. She is a specialist on multinationals, trade, industrial development, labour and women's issues in South-East Asia, and has consulted frequently on these subjects for various international development agencies (e.g. ILO, UNCTC, UNIDO, ESCAP, World Bank, OECD, ODI London.) She is the co-author of three books and more than fifty published articles, about one-third of which deal with women's work in developing countries. Kalpana Ram is currently completing her doctoral dissertation in the Anthropology School of Pacific Studies, Australian National Uni versity. She has undertaken fieldwork among the Mukkuwar fishing community in 1982-3 and again in 1983-4. The focus of the research is on the interrelations between caste, class and gender in the context of change in the labour process.