According to a study by the ILO (2001), women's share of the labour force is increasing worldwide. Today, women's participation rate in the labour force is over 40 per cent of the global workforce. .Higher educational levels and falling fertility rates have contributed to this increased participation. There is also some evidence that women in some Asian countries may be less marginalised in their advancement into top managerial positions than their counterparts elsewhere. .As women become more educated and qualified for managerial positions, the number of Asian women managers and executives is predicted to rise over the next decade. This book examines the opportunities and barriers for women managers in Asia and presents an update on their progress in management.
The studies comprised in this book offer insights into women's agency in periods of turbulent social change, which characteristically bring the promise of inclusion for the excluded and the oppressed. In order to be properly understood, women's agency needs to be observed and analysed against the backdrop of specific political projects and the identitarian discourses that facilitate them. This exigency is the main driving force behind the individual chapters of the book. By focusing specifically on societies in the fault-lines of modernity, the book brings to light the mabny ways in which women have responded of contributed to transition and gained empowerment through their active participation in social change.
This book aims to explore the meanings and operation of agency exercised by women in various cultures and contexts in Asia. It analyses women's capacity for action and how women sometimes resist the discourses and conditions that shape their lives. The book also discusses how this agency can be interpreted and assessed. The contributors to this book examine particular women's practice and expression in particular contexts: 'parasite singles'-especially unmarried young women-in Japan, whose unconventional lifestyles seem to effect a subversion of the expected female roles of daughters, mothers, and wives: Indonesian women employed as domestic workers in Singapore: the women from South Korea and the Philippines who have married Japanese men through the international marriage business system: female Muslim healers in Lombok who work against fate: rural Balinese women who have their babies in hospitals: and female performers and performances in contemporary Indonesian theatre.