Briefly I want to establish the key characteristics of the nature of living and working conditions of women. Today in most Asian countries women work increasingly in the informal economy. This is the type of work that receives least protection, remuneration and notice. Women work in areas that are the least organized as well. For example in Malaysia the largely feminised electronics sector employers have defied the various organizing strategies since its introduction in the 1970s and how they have got away with it. Women are constantly trafficked into all sorts of dangerous work in the region and receive scant notice by the authorities. Thirdly in many parts of Asia women have to work under regimes that are hostile to them using various excuses. Thirdly organized women mainly belong to male-dominated trade unions that have generally refused to take up issues essential for women & sexual harassment, reproductive health issues, etc. Finally I want to point to the fact that capital in much of the feminised industries in Asia is highly mobile. So we continue to see cycles of sudden employment for women in one country followed by factory closures and capital flight to other countries. All of these factors make organizing among and by women workers extremely difficult.

Yet in the face of these challenges many women workers have organized and continue to organize. I want to point out some of these experiences. When industrial work became increasingly informalised in Japan and Korea trade unions did not and often would not organize them. The issues of organizing women workers who did not have a common factory floor, or an easily identifiable employer or a common workplace were challenges that traditional factory trade unionism did not want to venture into. As a result many efforts were initiated by women themselves to organize into women's unions and community unions. Today when male workers have been pushed into the informal economy in a big way, trade unions are beginning to face the challenge of organizing in the informal economy in Korea for example.

Another organizing experience among women workers is in Sri Lanka. Here when trade unions were not allowed to organize in the Free Trade Zones, activists (mainly women) organized the women workers in the boarding houses and educated them. This finally resulted in the formation of a trade union in the Free Trade Zones in Sri Lanka. Though there may be much more work that needs to be done to make this union more women-led, the initial organizing was done in an alternative way. I think the trade union in Malaysia who want to organize the electronics sector cam learn much from this experience.

There are also numerous examples of how women workers have organized to defend their rights through using the consumer movement in the North to put pressure on contractors producing for certain brand labels. There has been much success in some of these instances though this strategy has not always worked. There are many examples of how contractors would give in initially to this type of pressure and reinstate dismissed workers, or grant recognition to unions and yet after a couple of years they would move production to other places and the workers lose their jobs. In some cases like the North Sails Case in Sri Lanka is dragging on for many years. Another development is that even the International Trade Unions like the ITGLWF have sometimes also used a similar strategy by putting pressure on the brand companies. Yet it must be remembered that most mainstream trade unions still do not use this type of organizing strategy.
From these experiences I want to draw some points about organsing women workers.

Firstly I want to say that women in the informal economy provide an opportunity for organising. Just as poor working conditions for women and children during the industrial revolution led finally to the formation of trade unions the masses of women workers in the informal economy pose a similar challenge today.

Secondly because the people we are trying to organize are mainly women it gives us in the progressive labour movement a golden opportunity to attack patriarchy in addition to capital. We missed the first opportunity when trade unionism was first being introduced to the world. Now we have yet again another opportunity. Attack all the forces that contribute towards making labour cheap and docile and patriarchy certainly leads in this. Unions have a golden opportunity to redefine themselves. Work for women is not confined to the workplace or to paid labour. For most working class women work includes both domestic and paid work. There is much that needs to be explored in this area and much to be defended in the interest of the reproduction of the working class.

Thirdly much of the female labour in Asia is migrant labour. This creates another opportunity to straighten out another problem that has plagued and hindered the victory of the working class- race. We have seen how this migrant sector has brought a new organizing impetus in the US. Such an opportunity presents itself in many of our countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Korea and Japan. We cannot go on denying that race, caste or colour are not union issues. The Garment and Textile Workers Unions in Victoria for example found out that these issues needed to be addressed if the union was going to survive. The issue of colour and language was dividing the garment workers and giving employers an opportunity to lower working conditions in the sector. So the union took that challenge and the union continues to survive because it found ways to reach the migrant workers, the non-English speaking workers, the home-based workers.

Trade Unions need to be inclusive rather than exclusive in their attitude if women workers are going to be organized. Inclusion needs to extend to many areas & race, gender, sexual orientation, and even perhaps to support for political parties. If workers continue to be divided along lines of political party affiliation the capitalists can get with many things.

Fourthly in Asia many women workers live in situations of war and conflict. Trade Unions often ignore this aspect of life for women workers. Issues of difficulty of finding work for women in these situations or for the increased number of women-headed households are not generally regarded as labour issues. As the war on terrorism, fascist and patriarchal fundamentalism and other such oppression extends in Asia new labour issues emerge. For example in Kelantan, Malaysia the state government has imposed a dress code on women workers. Reactions against this generally came from the women's movement. The labour movement did not see this as a labour issue, just as they did not see sexual harassament as a labour issue. I believe these challenges will increase in the years to come and labour activism cannot ignore them.

In conclusion what I am arguing for is that women workers are posing a great challenge to trade unionism to restructure itself. In the last few decades we saw how trade unionism both on the left and right failed to stop the march of global capital mainly because of its rigidity and political party affiliations. The rightwing unions refused to question the rightwing parties that encouraged neo-liberal globalization. Likewise leftwing unions refused to question their parties when they made mistakes about workers independent organizing efforts. Well we have seen where that got the workers in socialist and former socialist countries. In the same way I am saying that labour activism needs to rethink its positions and strategies as new challenges are being posed in organizing new forms of labour that are largely female in many parts of Asia.

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