Women and factory work : a case in Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines

Abstract

This study examines factory work and women's gender roles at work and in the home in a village in Cagayan, de Oro City, Philippines. Factory work at Quality Foods Incorporated (QFI) provides a stage for an in-depth investigation of women's work, roles and gender. The difference factory work made to women's lives is examined in relation to their economic autonomy, decision-making power within the household, control and disposition of income earned, and workload in the domestic division of labour. The study compares women factory workers with non-factory workers and homemakers. It also adopts a woman-centred focus, although men are included so that gender issues can be explored. A combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches are used in this study. The quantitative data were obtained from 5,959 individuals and 1,050 households covered in the Baseline Study conducted in five out of the seven zones in Mauswagon, the study area. From the baseline population, a sample of 300 women aged 15-49 (100 in each work category) were randomly selected. A total of 293 men aged 15 and above who were residents in the randomly selected women's households were also included. (Seven households of the women included in the survey had no male residents.) Qualitative data were provided by in-depth interviews, life histories of informants, and participant observation in the factory as a night and day shift worker. The Baseline and Survey data generated background information about the women and men studied, while the qualitative data provided an in-depth understanding of women's gender roles at work and in the home by examining the internal dynamics within families and the working environment. A narrative style has been employed to present some of the qualitative data, allowing women to some extent to 'speak for themselves'. One of the findings was that factory workers in Mauswagon do not fit the typical picture of young and single women working in most of the multi-national companies and export- processing plants that mushroomed in the Philippines in the late 1960s to early 1990s. A mixture of young and mature, single and married women worked at QFI. Having children less than seven years of age did not deter women from working in the factory. Factory work had contradictory effects on the lives of women in relation to the workload and tasks performed in the workplace and at home, and decision-making power and power relations within the household. The relatively high incomes women earned from the factory gave them considerable power at the household level and in organising daily family affairs. However, this was often undermined by their overcommitment to credit schemes, repayments taking a large proportion from their fortnightly pay, and by the extent to which women's earnings enabled men to withdraw from major financial and domestic responsibilities to pursue their personal needs and leisure. Married and never-married factory workers enjoyed more power in household decision-making than the never-married non-factory workers or homemakers. Nevermarried factory workers also spent the least time on housework among the women studied. The hours devoted to housework were especially small when they were the major contributors to the family income. Although women factory workers received relatively high incomes, they were associated with manual work that was classified as 'unskilled' by management. They occupied the lowest positions in the QFI hierarchy with very few opportunities for upward mobility. The contradiction inherent in the 'unskilled' classification accorded to the women's work was evident when QFI managers enumerated the skills that their women workers possessed that made them suitable for work at the preparation table. This list of 'skills' included manual skills, visual acuity, delicate touch, tolerance of monotonous and repetitive tasks, and attentiveness to detail. Women, especially ever-married women, still bore the burden of housework regardless of whether they were in the paid workforce. However as women spent a greater portion of their time in the workplace, crossing-over of the boundaries of traditional gender roles occurred in the domestic arena. Men from working women's households spent more time on housework than men from women homemakers' households. However, although paid work modified the domestic division of labour and reduced the mean number of hours women spent on housework, domestic work was still perceived as women's primary responsibility by both men and women themselves. Hence, working women suffered a double burden of attending to both paid and domestic work. Finally, the effects of factory work on women's lives in Mauswagon were multi-faceted. Some were empowered in terms of making decisions and financial autonomy, while most were oppressed by the double burden of paid and domestic work. However, as women factory workers were faced with very few alternatives, they were willing to continue to endure the monotony, repetitiveness, pressure, and difficulty of their work. Factory work may have had varied meanings to the women but it remained a considerable source of economic and social satisfaction for them. Show more