From export processing to erogenous zones: International discourses on women's work in Thailand

Abstract

This paper explores the ways in which accounts of women's work in the literature on gender and globalisation are prone to conflation and eroticisation. Whilst the significance of the internationalisation of sexual services and trafficking in women is fully acknowledged, the authors illustrate the tendency for discussions of women's factory work to be conflated with sex work, to the extent that the former is often rendered invisible by the latter. Using the examples of the discourses about, the sexualisation of Thai women, they argue that analyses of both academic publications and more popular discussions in the media have had negative and contradictory repercussions for different groups of women in Thailand. They present evidence of negative perceptions of Thai women travelling outside Thailand, either physically or through participation in discussion groups in cyberspace. Secondly, drawing on experience of working with women workers in the electronics factories in the North of Thailand who are trying to organise around working conditions and occupationalhealth and safety issues they argue that the over-riding views of Thai women as primarily sexual beings within the global economy have been problematic in terms of women workers having their voices heard, and thus, much less being able to organise in defence of their interests. Utilising a gender analysis lens the article argues that gender interests of women are constructed with and through sexuality, but are not reducible to it.