Withering Away of the Hong Kong Dream?

Withering Away of the Hong Kong Dream?: Women Workers under Industrial Restructuring During the last decade, Hong Kong's economy has experienced a rapid restructuring and the dwindling of the industrial sector. To find out more about how this industrial restructuring affected women workers in manufacturing industries, we conducted in January 1995 a telephone survey of 1,004 workers, of which 505 were female. The survey questionnaire examined different types of employment status change of our respondents during the five-year period before the poll. Following upon the survey, we conducted in-depth interviews with 40 women workers selected from our telephone poll. Our analysis suggests that, when the Hong Kong economic structure is in flux, employment status within that structure become fluid as well. This is most evident from the collective employment experience of women workers in the past five years; many have in fact moved in and out of different employments frequently. As the economies of Hong Kong and the mainland become more integrated, this cohort of women workers confronts a double jeopardy in finding new employment: mothering responsibilities and age discrimination. Economic restructuring also afflicts the quality of their workplace experience and family life, as well as their sense of self worth. Although some cope with the situation by learning new skills, most have become frustrated and angry at being denied full time jobs with reasonable pay, at the time when they are still fully capable of and committed to working. In short, the overall impact on women workers is one of falling down both the class and gender ladders. If they have always been at the bottom of the class and gender hierarchies, restructuring has brought about a further deterioration in both dimensions of their social position. In terms of employment, they are now either unemployed or with marginalized and informal employment, or with service jobs paying less than their manufacturing jobs in the past. At home, they have become more dependent on (and subordinate to) their husbands and are forced to resume the domestic roles of housewife and mother. Gender roles have once again been rigidified as gender inequalities at home and at work are reinforced.