Women in the Urban and Industrial Workforce: Southeast and East Asia.

The rapid social and economic development taking place in the non-socialist countries of Southeast and East Asia is nowhere more apparent than it is in the economic activities of women. Steady urbanization is taking place, and among the grow ing number of women in urban areas, an increasing proportion were in the labour force over the 1972s. This change has been due to many factors: changing economic structure and therefore changing employment opportunities; changing patterns of marriage, fertility and family relationships; changing attitudes toward many aspects of women's employment. This book examines various aspects of women's employment in the countries of Southeast and East Asia. Manufacturing, trade and service sector employment are all covered ; so are migrants and their adaptation to urban employment, and links between women's roles in the workforce and with their families. A range of approaches are used, including analysis of census and survey data on employment, presentation of the findings of intensive micro-studies, and case studies of projects aimed to improve working women's conditions and their influences on the processes afecting them as workers .