Young women workers in manufacturing

The year 1985 had dual significance for the United Nations. It marked the final year of the United Nations Decade for Women and also was designated as the International Youth Year. This coincidence underscores the special concerns that the United Nations attaches to both women and youth, especially in developing countries.

Within the United Nations it is today fully recognized that there is a special need to consider the role of women and youth in the development process. Priority attention to these two major disadvantaged groups, it is increasingly believed, will permit developing countries to maximize the utilization of their human resources for development and at the same time ensure that the benefits of development are equitably shared by all citizens.

The focus of the present study is the problems and issues faced by a specific group of youth and women young women workers in manufacturing industries of rapidly developing countries of Asia and the Pacific. Many countries in the Asian and Pacific region are, like developing countries elsewhere, en countering the fact that the effects of economic development on women's participation differ from those experienced by men. Working women have dual socio-economic roles, one role directly in the formal production system and as unpaid domestic labour in the family and household and a second role in repro duction.¹ Distinctions between these two roles are often blurred in the tradi tional sector in developing countries, while in the modern sector only the direct production role is acknowledged. The result is that women's roles and contribu tions are underestimated so that women benefit less and are often marginalized in the process of modernization and industrialization.2 Thus, one important social issue is whether economic development makes women increasingly subor dinate, inferior or marginal labour force participants, even while providing them with new economic opportunities.