ABSTRACT

This book provides a comparative analysis of the social, economic, industrial and migration dynamics that structure women’s paid work and unpaid care work experience in the Asia-Pacific region. Each country-focused chapter examines the formal and informal ways in which work and care are managed, the changing institutional landscape, gender relations and fertility concerns, employer and trade union responses and the challenges policy makers face and the consequences of their decisions for working women. By covering the entire region, including Australia and New Zealand, the book highlights the way different national work and care regimes are linked through migration, with wealthier countries looking to their poorer neighbours for alternative sources of labour. In addition, the book contributes to debates about the barriers to women’s participation in the workforce, the valuation of unpaid care, the gender wage gap, social protection and labour regulation for migrant workers and gender relations in developing Asia.

chapter 1|21 pages

Work/care regimes in the Asia-Pacific

A feminist framework

part I|142 pages

Familial/informal care regimes

chapter 2|16 pages

China

The reconfiguring of women, work and care

chapter 3|14 pages

Malaysia

Balancing paid and unpaid work

chapter 4|16 pages

Singapore

Contradictions in the work/care regime

chapter 5|16 pages

Indonesia

Middle-class complicity and state failure to provide care

chapter 6|15 pages

The Philippines

Pressures for change in the work/care regime

chapter 7|16 pages

Cambodia

Managing work and care in a post-conflict context

chapter 8|15 pages

Bangladesh

Class, precarity and the politics of care

chapter 9|15 pages

India

Economic inequality and social reproduction

chapter 10|17 pages

Sri Lanka

Working realities and gendered fictions

part II|31 pages

Familial/formal care regimes

chapter 11|15 pages

Australia

The care challenge

chapter 12|14 pages

New Zealand

Caring for women or women caring?

part III|63 pages

Familial care regimes

chapter 13|15 pages

Japan

From social reproduction to gender equality

chapter 14|16 pages

South Korea

Work, care and the Wollstonecraft dilemma

chapter 15|15 pages

Timor-Leste

Mixed messages on work and care

chapter 16|15 pages

Papua New Guinea

Work and care in a subsistence economy