Precariousness, gender and violence at work – perspectives from Asia

A less studied aspect in research on globalisation and outsourced production is how work in the global value chain is infused with precarity and may even become a space of harassment and violence, including sexual abuse. This themed section seeks to contribute to the literature on gender-based violence in factories where production has been outsourced to the Global South, especially Asia. In this introduction, we present some overarching perspectives on global capitalism, zonification, precariousness, crisis and gender-based violence, and introduce some key themes and findings of the articles included in this section, namely China, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. We contend that violence and harassment need to be understood as both structural and embodied, that context needs to be considered and that production and social reproduction are closely interlinked in generating gendered precariousness and violence. It is equally crucial to pay close attention to workers’ resilience towards and resistance against indecent working conditions. Even in politically hostile authoritarian contexts workers resist intolerable working conditions and the patriarchal structures that discipline and deplete them. Stronger responses by companies to indecent work, violence and harassment at the workplace are, however, still found to be wanting. Calling for more robust national and international regulatory frameworks is one step forward in mitigating the depletion of workers and direct violent harms. At the same time, a structural approach that addresses the underlying factors which create vulnerabilities and unequal power relations across gender, race and class is desperately needed.