The Global Factory: Cross-Border Production Networks and Women Workers in Asia

Abstract

The international economy has undergone two major changes. The first is the global restructuring of manufacturing, coinciding with the shift of labour-intensive manufacturing production from the United States, Japan and Western Europe to developing countries in Asia and elsewhere. The second is the shift from manufacturing to services and the blurring of the distinction between manufacturing and services. Both these changes have had tremendous implications for the Asian developing nations. First, the partitisation of industry, where the various stages of manufacturing have become separate and dispersed, has meant that simple tasks can be transported elsewhere by the multinational enterprises, the drivers of this changing manufacturing structure. Second, skilled tasks are performed by workers in developed countries while simpler tasks are carried out by predominantly unskilled workers in countries that are located at the other end of the global supply chain.