Transnational Tradeswomen

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Transnational Tradeswomen

Duration: 1 hour, 2 minutes and 2 seconds

Country: United States

Language: English

License: dotSUB Non-Commercial

Genre: Documentary

Producer: Vivian Price

Director: Vivian Price

Posted by: vprice on May 23, 2007

Transnational Tradeswomen is a road trip, set off by the 1995 Women's Conference in Beijing, that explores the situations of women construction laborers in Asia.

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Video Transcription

We need to fight the policies and the practices that keep labor weak and divided.
For women in particular, what is also important
[Transnational Tradeswomen]
is our own sense of ourselves.
My arm is pretty buff, huh?
You look pretty slim.
This film is a result of a political and a personal journey.
I look big because of what I wear.
I was obedient as a young girl growing up in the USA in the 1950s.
And because of this job, my arm is getting bigger.
But as I got older, I rebelled and started questioning what I was told.
This job requires a lot of strength!
It's not meant for everybody and it's not meant for every woman.
I came of age in the 1960s and '70s when the U.S. was shaken up by the Vietnam War.
But if a woman is thinking about it, there's nothing that you can't do.
It was a time of rebellion.
The civil rights, women's, and antiwar movement encouraged all kinds of questioning
and propelled many of us into action.
I started hanging out with working class women who were tired of making low wages.
Because of affirmative action, we could apply for the better paying jobs that were mainly done by men.
First, I got a job driving a truck,
then working maintenance in a refinery,
then got a skill and became an electrician.
Working in the trades inspired me to make films about women construction workers
because I knew it took courage.
Union construction work in the U.S. pays well
but women are often not treated as equals.
Some of them really get on your nerves and really push you and push you and push you
where they make you try to pick up more than what you can
and drag you around where you just ... you just lose interest.
You know, you just get mad, you know.
I used to be so mad when I'd leave work, boy, just mad.
And if I had a bad night at home, I know I'd just blow it away when I get on the iron pile at work.
I'd say man, I feel like this and juh...
I used to get up an hour early every morning when I first started,
just to drink a pot of coffee and smoke a pack of cigarettes
and think about what I was going to say to somebody
because I knew they were going to mess with me.
Every morning I had to get myself ... you know, psyche myself out, you know,
till I got tired of doing that shit.
Denise's feelings about hostility on the job are echoed
by many other women construction workers
in the U.S., Europe and Australia.
Women have not become commonplace in the construction industry,
contrary to the expectations of many women pioneers.
The construction industry is a prime example
of the persistence of the arbitrary sexual division of labor,
not only because the work is difficult but because it is symbolically male work.
Women's manual work is often invisible.
Think of one of the wonders of the world, the Taj Mahal.
Do we ever consider that many of the 20,000 workers who built it
were women?
Traditional work for women in agricultural societies includes heavy manual labor.
Women have been doing heavy labor as part of family or community work throughout history.
During times of crisis in industrialized societies,
women often perform men's jobs,
while in many other countries, women are a normal part of the everyday manual workforce.
But even then, there is a sexual division of labor.
In the U.S., tradeswomen have started to organize
to define our needs and overcome our isolation.
But how is our struggle connected to that of women laborers historically and internationally?
United Nations Conference on Women, Beijing 1995
That question pushed me to go to Beijing in 1995.
[Opening Ceremony, Beijing]
Women construction workers and organizers met at a workshop during the Beijing conference.
[Construction Workshop]
Glad to see that somebody made this meeting.
[Carpenter Denmark]
So I just started to go up here.
[Electrician, U.S.A.]
And the issues that I have, I suppose for this workshop
and for anything else, would be:
How do we get across to younger women,
starting in elementary school and junior high school
that these are viable occupations and that they can do this.
So that we need to get to them before the society has gotten to them
and, tells them that they cannot do math,
that they don't have spacial relationships,
that they can't, that they can't, that they can't.
I started as a laborer,
[Laborer, Bermuda]
and the training that you get is that they would teach you how to make the mortar,
how much water to use in a bag of cement.
If you could change one thing what would that be?
My one thing that I would change back on the island of Bermuda
is stereotyping women working in construction.
You know, they feel that it's too masculine
or they think that you're another way
You know, that's basically it.
[Union Instructor, Japan]
I'm a member of the Laborers' Union.
People think of women as workers in the family, men outside of it.
I want people to accept women having a family and an outside job.
I organize workshops in the union to change these stereotyped ideas.
I want to talk about women and construction in Afghanistan.
[Non-profit representative Afghanistan]
The women in Afghanistan, as you know,
they're working for construction and also they're working for agriculture.
It is nowadays the women that are earning money.
They're earning money for their family especially as refugees in Pakistan.
We want something more for them for a good life.
Say your name again.
[Ruth Manorama Organizer, Bangalore, India]
I'm specifically not a construction laborer.
We work with the construction laborers,
so I would be able to tell you what are their problems.
The construction laborers, in our country, are 20 million.
This is men and women.
Half of our construction laborers are women, more than that.
They are mostly in the unskilled labor, they are not skilled.
Only now, we've been thinking to upgrade their skill so they could come as masons.
And in the labor market, there are lots of superstitions that the women,
because they menstruate, they cannot build construction.
So, therefore, they're only made to help the mason help the men workers.
We don't have protection for labor, construction labor in our country.
This is where I feel that the women in the other
... you know, construction workers, laborers outside,
especially from the United States, you know, Netherlands, and Denmark,
people should really raise this issue of labor conditions there for solidarity.
That is why I extend a call for all of you to come over to India
We decided to hold a press conference the day after the workshop.
We're doing a lot of grassroots organizing here and that is....
Women talked about issues that cross national barriers, like safety and access to jobs.
Towards the end of the conference, a delegation from Thailand
came to talk about the problems women laborers face there.
I introduce a woman who was a construction worker in Thailand for seven years.
She said that women and teenagers ... ladies come to work
They usually come from the rural areas. They are about 15 up to 18.
And when they work in the construction camp ... there's always a big construction camp ...
and at the construction camps, very often these teenagers ... young girls,
you know, are being raped by the construction boys.
She'd like to know whether any of the sisters, friend from different countries,
do they have similar problems like the teenager girls from the northeast of Thailand.
That they have this serious problem.
She'd like to know whether any of these countries have a similar problem.
In Denmark, we have talked a lot about sexual harassment
But as skilled labor, and we work together with the men at the same level.
We don't have this problem
but we have the problem with the young girls who want to
sign a contract to become an apprentice
And sometimes they're not able to say,
They can't defend themselves because they are in a contract.
They depend on the employer.
The Beijing conference got me thinking more about the contradictions and connections
between the global north and south.
It certainly is not as simple as global sisterhood, hugs all around and we understand one another.
I was struck by Ruth Manorama's suggestion to learn more about women construction workers
by going to India and other Third World countries.
It seemed that in Asia in particular, many women worked as construction laborers.
So over the next few years, I found ways to travel
to Thailand
to Taiwan
to Singapore
to India
and collaborated with film makers in Pakistan and Japan.
[Bangkok, Thailand 2004]
I brought my research on women construction workers to a conference
in Bangkok at the Asian Institute of Technology.
Graduate students like Boonsamtook the time to drive me to construction sites
and introduced me to women workers.
Labor unions are weak in Thailand because there is no real protection for workers to organize.
Unions currently represent only 3 percent of all workers.
Since the 1970s, many corporations have come to Thailand
for the cheap labor, but there are many periods of uncertain employment.
In 1997, many workers were laid off during the Asian financial crisis.
Isaan, the northeast part of the country, is the poorest section
and many people from there become migrant workers in Chiang Mai,
the big city in the north, and here in Bangkok, the capitol.
Another graduate student, Tippaya, took me to a worksite near her home
and asked the workers if we could see where they lived and talk to us about their lives.
If she wouldn't mind showing us where she lives.
Shalat generously agreed.
Workers live on or near the building sites until it's time to pack up
and move to another site
or go back home and plant rice.
There are five families, around 30 people.
Her husband.
Shalat and her husband, like thousands of others, came to Bangkok from the rural northeast part of Thailand
where surviving on rice farming has become increasingly difficult.
women and men from the upper Samsui districts of the Kwang-tung Province in China
I work in the fields.
When it's rice season, I go back to the fields.
In the off season, I work in construction.
The rice field that you go back to is your mother's?
The rice field is my mother's. It's very small.
It's not enough to earn a living.
Working in construction keeps me from starving.
Do I think this is better than staying home?
It's better than home. If I stay home, I won't have any income.
Are there many people like you working on this job?
Yes, even people with families come to work.
Before no, but now they all come.
Because there is no income. Just enough to get by.
What is your name?
My name is Somjai Raddi.
I do cement, wood, and hit nails.
It's difficult for women to hit nails.
Or to take tiles up to the roof.
They can't do it.
Their hearts are not 100 percent courage.
Like men who dare death.
It's risky.
Yes, like women can be soldiers but can't do many things men can do.
[Not on subtitles] What kind of work does she do?
What kind of work do you do on the site?
Everything.
Can you give me more details?
Loading wood. Handing wood to the men.
Caption: Next Day On Chalat's Worksite
Women in many parts of Asia do construction labor during the dry season.
The rise of an economy based on cash
pushes family members to leave their farms and find work in jobs like construction,
often leaving the children back home.
Women get paid less than 150 baht a day, about $4 U.S.
But that's better than farm labor wages or domestic work.
Ironically, women in Asia do heavy manual work but don't get skill training or skilled jobs.
Even if some women do climb and hammer, they are paid as unskilled helpers.
Yet there are some skills that women are considered to be good at
like installing ceramic tile and cement plastering.
I met Jen through Sani who helped me interview her.
She quit school since she was 13 years old
and then she came along with her parents to work for the construction.
She said that she started to work like the heavy work, to carry the cement block.
Then she learned from the other workers
to do the ceramic decoration, and cement, oh, and painting.
Jen is a woman who learned her skills through a traditional family setting.
One of her main employers is her brother who is a contractor.
Jen's example illustrates the idea that encouraging families
to be supportive of women's interest in pursuing skilled trades
is one way to change the male-dominated culture of the workplace.
She gets paid by day, around 300 baht per day
There was another group of workers in Thailand,
undocumented workers from bordering Myanmar, who include women in their ranks.
A researcher from Myanmar gave me these photos of women doing plastering
and other construction labor in her country in the 1990s.
She told me that the political and economic situation has pushed many of them across the border.
Migrant workers are among the most invisible and least protected of all workers.
Just as factories join the race to the bottom by relocating to where they can pay lower wages,
construction contractors recruit foreign labor for the same reason.
This is what is happening in Taiwan as well.
[Koahsiung, Taiwan - 2003]
I came to Taiwan to show my film on women construction workers in the U.S. at a local labor film festival
And while I was there my hosts help me interview women laborers in Taiwan.
This is Mr. Hong who took me over to see friends of his who were remodeling a store.
On the way we saw a crew spreading asphalt
and I saw that one of the workers was a woman.
So we pulled over and asked if we could film.
The woman was raking the hot asphalt with a hand tool
while the machine work was done by a man.
Later, I wondered which one of them was considered a skilled worker
and how much each was paid.
Taiwan's labor movement is stronger than that in Thailand
but privatization is challenging union strength.
Like in Thailand, women are employed on sites as helpers.
Statistics show that 14 percent of Thailand's construction workers are women.
While fewer women work in construction in Taiwan,
they are commonly seen working on construction crews.
I learned more about women laborers from talking to Mr. Hong's friends,
a couple who were also from a farming village.
What did she say?
OK, she's from Chinjong. It's in Southern Taiwan.
She's from a village where about two-thirds of the population work on construction sites just like them.
And she started working on the construction sites 20 years ago after she married her husband.
It's very typical in their village and in many places in Taiwan where construction workers
[Ching Wen]
couples work together on construction sites,
the entire family will work together, sometimes even
children will work with their parents too.
But she doesn't want her children to work on the construction sites.
She wants them to go to school because this is hard work.
When they work for larger construction sites,
they usually do administrative or managerial work instead of doing actual labor.
Because they are village people and they are not very well educated
so they think it would be a good idea to learn a skill
and with a good skill you can make good money.
Working construction sites make much better money
because agriculture depends too much on the weather and the natural environment.
What was she telling you before about ... what did you ask her and what did she answer you?
And she said it would take you 3-4 years to learn all the skills that you need.
Well, they usually do the kind of work that she is doing now.
Very few women would do more skilled jobs.
So they didn't start working until they got married
and that's probably why they don't think they can manage work that needs higher skills.
It's very typical for women her age, about 40 or 50,
to follow their husbands into construction work
but younger women nowadays don't do that anymore
because it's too dangerous, too hard, and too tiring.
21:02So what do they do?
Foreign laborers nowadays have taken over this kind of work.
So even men find it difficult to get a job.
So their wives would just do other things, other labors.
Taiwan has modernized quickly but with the mobility of capital,
the pressure to move state-owned segments of the economy into private hands,
and increased international migration, unemployment can also happen quickly.
Rural people, like this couple, and indigenous people have to be especially resourceful.
Construction has long provided a buffer area of employment for men and women,
but women's relationship to the work is less visible and less secure.
[Singapore - The Samsui Women]
she thought it was important to include the story of the Samsui women who did construction work in her country.
She arranged for us to go to the Red Hill Flats and meet Chi Yin, the journalist who had become friends
[Madame Loh's apartment]
with the few surviving Samsui women
when she researched their lives for her articles.
She took us to see Madame Loh who was in her 90s
and Madame Cheong who helped take care of Madame Loh and other surviving Samsui women.
came to Singapore as part of labor recruited to build the British empire.
Samsui women worked in construction
because at 60 cents a day, it paid three times better than factory work.
They chiseled out concrete, mixed and carried cement,
hauled bricks and other building materials on many landmark sites
such as the Mandarin Marina, a deluxe hotel that opened in 1973.
I can't remember, that was so long ago.
I came here when I was 19.
How difficult was your work?
How can I say ... You'll never understand.
I always have to carry something and then walk a lot.
Yeah, all the work we had done we had to carry so our shoulder is ... very kind of like injury.
When did you see the machinery come to work?
After they changed to Lee Kwan Yew then the machinery started.
I don't remember what year it is now, how many years now.
After they had the machinery, did you ... [that] have any influence on your work?
After the machinery, I didn't work anymore.
The demand for Samsui women's labor slackened off in the 1970s
when the industry was mechanized and the labor become entirely framed as male work.
Then they turned to other jobs like selling vegetables and cardboard on the streets.
Some would say this is only natural.
Women provided a pool of cheap labor as long as there was a need.
But framing women only as helpers makes their strength and need to make a living just like men invisible.
The story of Samsui women is a story of sacrifice and hard work that became part of Singapore's national culture,
resonating with Singapore's need to unite its multiracial society
and distract from its reputation as having an authoritarian government.
Samsui women were depicted on phone cards in their famous red hats
and were taken up in popular culture in a TV series,
art exhibits,
and even in gourmet recipes.
The government began inviting the women to elaborate feasts celebrating them,
much like the Rosie the Riveters in the United States.
But like the U.S. Rosie's who were sent home after World War II,
the Singapore Samsui women are also symbols whose meaning we have to interpret for ourselves.
[India - Delhi, Chennai - 2002-2004]
While, I started out by looking at the lives of Asian women workers,
I ended up learning about the impact of privatization
and globalization on construction workers' lives
and their attempts to fight back.
These marchers are part of a large movement of informal sector workers
whose rights are not truly protected by Indian labor law.
The purpose for the march was to call attention to the need for insurance,
pensions and education for informal sector workers,
as well as protesting the way technology is being introduced into
construction sites and causing rapid unemployment, especially for women.
But before I came across them, I spent some time going to job sites.
Devi translated for me and traveled with me.
I was very lucky because her family took me in
because I wanted to know why so many women worked in construction and what their issues were.
Construction industry is an entry level job for migrants from poorer areas,
mainly the agricultural workers who are more and more being expropriated from their place of work,
the small landholding being given out to the bigger landlords and they are forced move out.
There is also a huge mass of people moving out as a result of developmental projects
the displacement led migration to the urban centers.
[J John, Editor - Laborfile Journal, Delhi]
And we can probably say that half of the workers will be women.
In this city of Delhi there are three kinds of construction going on.
[Matthew Cherian, Board Member - Mobile Creche Foundation]
which is usually in the city center, very mechanized using tower cranes and boom cranes
and various mechanized construction.
These are mostly men.
And in the intermediate class, you will find a mix of
28:01 28:04 28:01 28:04 both highly advanced construction as well as low construction.
then you will find mostly women laborers.
The skill level is low but the sort of wages are also low.
And when the women laborers are working,
then the children are all playing on the construction heaps or on the sand dumps.
And usually the woman takes a certain amount of time to go and either breast-feed the children
or the elder siblings are looking after the smaller children
And that is why the organization Mobile Creche thought of having creches on construction sites.
Some of these sites are paid by the contractors.
The rest of it is met by Mobile Creche through its own fund-raising program.
I wanted to know more about the women who do this work.
Geetha, an activist in the workers movement, explained about the caste and tribal system.
There are many of these tribes and scheduled caste people.
They are the people who do the manual work historically.
And in these communities,
[Geetha Ramakrishnan, Joint Secretary - Nirman Mazdoor Union]
The work culture is not only male.
That has been a tradition which has continued even in spite of all these changes.
So that is why in the unskilled work, it is women and men.
But in the skilled work, women have always been prevented.
Our union, we try to train them in masonry skills, for example.
30:03There is a group of women workers whom we trained in masonry
but what happened was the contractors are not giving them work as masons.
30:03 30:07 30:13There the social thing comes,
that even if they can work as masons, they don't want to recognize them.
I met Ranganayki in Chennai.
She was one of the women who took mason training from Geetha's union.
My visit coincided with Navratri a nine-day Hindu holiday.
The last day is known as Ayuta Puja, the honoring of the tools.
This is like paying respect to the brick and to the implement with which you do the masonry work.
Ranganayki?
She also.
Isn't that unusual? I heard that a lot of times they won't let women touch the tools.
Yeah, yeah, they are not very happy about that.
But now things are changing, mind is also changing.
Why not do it? She can do it.
She can use the trowel very well even to do the ceiling plastering.
She's a good worker actually, though she's scared in front of men.
So you can see the whole thing. That's how it is.
[Padma Translator.]
We work 10 days a month.
If they call us we go to work, the rest of the time we stay here.
I went for mason training twice for 45 days through the union.
I got paid 45 or 50 Rs [rupees] a day, which was the minimum wage at the time.
Though I was given masonry training, no one takes us as masons.
They said they would give us work, but they couldn't.
[Contractor at Day Labor Market]
How many people do you hire per day?
That depends on the job.
About five or six.
You hire fewer ladies than men?
Both equally.
But if you hire ladies you pay them less than men?
Yes, less.
Ladies can't do what men can do.
Why? There are trained women masons.
No, that's not true.
So you think even with training ladies have less skill?
They need experience.
There are people who come with no training, right?
Right.
There are people who learn on the job...
... how much sand, how much cement to mix together.
These women were formally trained. Why can't you give them a job?
What do you mean?
There are women who went through training.
If you have such trained women, please send them to me.
Ranganayki is trained.
Where did she learn?
She got training relevant to the job.
You call Ranganayki trained? Do you know her age? She is 60!
Do people get training at that age?
So what if she's 55 or 60?
She has the strength to carry loads all day?
Of course she does
... but not for the easy mason's job of mixing sand and cement?
Yes, (women's) labor is very hard. But masonry is brain work.
How can you say women have no brains?
All they do is carry bricks and sand.
And who decides what they do?
It's one thing to be taught, another to learn it instinctively.
You must get it like that.
That's how we learned.
Nobody taught us. We just learned it naturally.
34:28 34:32If eyes observe, hands do.
You can't do it perfectly the first time.
Okay, I accept.
Then they should... should work for free.
Huh?
We did it like that too.
I also did it for free.
So they should work one day for free?
They won't do it.
If it brings them an opportunity ...
They won't do it.
But they wouldn't do it.
If they had a chance.
They work out of hardship.
Unless they get 10 rupees they won't eat that day.
Maybe they would try it.
They won't do it.
Maybe they would.
They won't do it.
Why not ask her?
Just for the heck of it ask her.
Then you'd hire her not for the helper but the skilled job?
Ask her, ask her.
This contractor not only has reservations about women masons,
he is also cutting down on his male workforce.
What do you think of using concrete machines on construction sites?
It is good.
Even if workers are losing their jobs?
The use of excavators, concrete mixers, and especially Readi-Mix trucks,
eliminates many jobs and hits women like Ranganayki very hard.
International financial agencies push for liberalization of the economy,
and together with patriarchal power relations, these forces influence the way technology is introduced.
For us, the pressure on the poor has increased
[Devita Singh, co-founder Mobile Creche Child Care]
and they're done with high technology and sectionally given out on contracts.
So instead of creating works, the government investment infrastructure is depriving people of work.
And women of course are being pushed out first because of the technological changes that are coming.
We have about 30 million construction workers...
[Subash Bhatnagar - President, Nirman Mazdoor Workers' Association]
And initially it is women who are being totally made unemployed
because they have been working basically as the unskilled workers.
You can talk to our treasurer who' s a male, but a very very active part of the union.
Construction work do very hard work, and the men may stand in one place
The mason stands in one place and he does his work
But the woman has to climb even four stories carrying bricks and mortar.
But the wages are very low.
So what we are seeking is some kind of equality
between men and women and women must have a right to life and livelihood
a proper job, and they must be paid properly.
Some organizations are addressing the needs of women. by organizing training
Others by starting cooperative businesses,
Gheeta works with a number of groups and coordinates a local branch of the National Construction Workers Union.
37:16These groups helped create the National Construction Act of 1996.
They hold sit-ins at a local welfare board,
conduct protests against unemployment
work for pensions and accident insurance for workers.
Gheeta's group participated in the hearings
on the impact of globalization on women factory, farmer and construction workers.
In 2/02, they marched across the state for three months
publicizing their struggles from village to village
protesting the way technology is being introduced
and for workers to have a say in the tripartheid governing boards.
India is an amazing place to see political activity on a grassroots level.
There is a history of mass struggle here that gives one hope.
[Outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan - 2005]
Pakistan and India used to be one country
but after achieving independence from Britain in 1947
and undergoing partition, they drifted apart politically and economically.
But both countries share a great deal.
As in India, Pakistan has many diverse cultural groups,
and no one group exemplifies the whole.
Women also do a portion of construction work.
Many of them are Rajput Odhs, who lived as cattle herders in India.
When they resettled in the Pakistani Punjab, they became construction workers.
Westerners may be surprised that Muslim women do construction work,
but I remember a delegate in Beijing talking about women construction workers in Afghanistan and Pakistan
and that their issues were similar though not the same as those of women in India.
I wasn't able to travel to Pakistan,
but I found an article on the web about women construction workers in Lahore and contacted the author.
Sobia Aslam was a graduate from college in the US
39:21 and had returned to Pakistan to work in broadcast journalism.
She agreed to help me.
Finding Odh women to film was harder than Sobia expected.
Sobia hired a local guide and went to talk things over with people there
But when she returned the next day, no one wanted to go on camera.
Her parents came with her because they spoke the local language, Punjabi, better than she did.
You can hear Sobia and her parents cajoling women to come on camera.
Sobia's dad is a retired customs official and her mother has her own textile business.
Eventually they persuaded a woman who claimed to be 128 years old to talk to them.
[Sobia Aslam - Hajara Bibi - Afreen Aslam]
Finally, others agreed to come on camera too.
What family do you belong to?
My family has died. They've probably been eaten in their graves now.
No, I mean what is the name of the caste?
Rajput. Rajput Odh.
We are Odhs. Rajput Odhs.
Which place did you come from in India?
Delhi. My parents used to graze cattle. They didn't work as laborers.
How many years did you work?
I worked all my life on construction sites,
making cement, that's our business.
How many children do you have?
I have 3 boys and 1 girl.
What do your children do?
They are construction workers.
Do you educate any child?
Yes, we send them to school but we need them to earn for us.
Who looks after your children when you go for work?
We leave the kids in Allah's care, what can we do?
How many children do you have?
Two.
When you go to work, do the men tease or harass you?
No.
Because your husband is with you?
If he is not with you?
Then of course they would.
We work in houses as cleaning women, that kind of work too
After speaking to people in the village,
Sobia and her family travel to a large housing construction site
where several women were working.
How long have you been working here as a laborer?
As a laborer? It's been two months now.
Did you ever work as a laborer before?
I did, a bit.
Are you married?
Yes.
How many children?
None.
What does your husband do?
He is a mason.
You're working alone here.
Does anyone harass you?
No. They respect us.
Once this house is completed you'll work someplace else?
Yes. We'll work someplace else.
Do you live nearby?
Yes.
What kind of problems do you face here?
We, have no problems here.
I am a mason.
I've been doing this work for the past three, four years.
How long have you been in this area?
For about six months.
Men and women work here.
How much do these Odh women make a day?
150 Rupees.
And do they get it themselves or do their male relatives take it for them?
They are paid weekly
and their father or brother etc. come and collect the money.
Do they get the same amount of money as the men?
They get paid the same as men.
What kind of work can they do?
They pick up bricks or make sand and cement mixture and carry it.
How do you know when these women are looking for work?
Their relatives, fathers and brothers come to us.
Do they receive any training or do they learn on the job?
Hunger is the best training. When one is hungry, one learns.
What kind of problems do these women face?
They don't get the respect in society which they deserve.
Are there people against women working in construction?
There are no laws against women working as against child labor.
There are some people who say when women work here, it spreads vulgarity.
I say a woman with a bad character doesn't need to work so hard all day.
These women earn 150 Rupees the hard way, by working all day.
How long have you been working here?
It's been a month.
Are you married?
No.
What's your name?
Kausar.
Fatima.
Do you also get the same amount of money?
How much?
150 Rupees.
Who do you give the money to?
To our parents.
Is it good enough for a good living?
It's hard to tell from this brief view of Pakistani women workers what's really going on.
I wish I could have spent some time there myself.
Pakistani scholar and activist Yameema Mitha,
who talked to many women laborers in her country,
writes that women are having a harder time finding work in this industry
as it becomes more mechanized, not only in Lahore, but also in Karachi,
following the pattern of unemployment in other countries in Asia.
[Tokyo, Japan - 2005]
I wanted to explore what it was like for women construction workers in Japan,
an industrialized country with a recent rural past.
There too, the labor movement is weak, privatization is increasing,
and part-time workers and migrant labor are on the rise.
I was lucky to meet Emiko and Hirohiko when they were in Los Angeles studying workers centers.
Emiko is a film maker, a member of a women's video collective.
And Hirohiko is a labor organizer.
They agreed to do research and film for me when they returned to Japan.
[When did women start doing construction work in Japan?]
[Kayoko Muramatsu -Lecturer, Nihon University]
[Gravel pit labor in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan]
Kayoko also talked about the Equal Employment Law passed in 1986 that I had heard about in Beijing.
This development is similar to what's happening in the U.S., Australia and Europe
where, for several reasons there are some small breakthroughs for women in male-dominated skilled jobs.
[Keiko, Plumber]
Are we going to the interview?
I want to work, but I also
need to take care of my child
I love my daughter
She's really important for me
But I find myself choosing to work over being with my kid
I still feel that way now
May I film you doing that?
Better to wait till I get set up.
I told you that nothing bothered me, but the truth is...
They won't let me do important jobs like new construction.
They only let me do remodels.
That's why my boss said he wished I were a man
when I got pregnant.
It's getting cold.
So now you feel you can't tolerate this environment?
Yeah, I feel that way.
Yeah, I've been working there for 9 years or so.
I've been putting up with it, but in the last five years...
it's been bothering me.
Since you had your child?
I really like this job
I was finally doing construction
Now that's how they treat me.
That's the way things are.
But when my daughter grows up
I don't know if I can work comfortably with these people.
You love to work?
How about the type of work that you do?
I love the work.
I really enjoy it.
I love figuring things out.
It's hard work.
And sometimes people do not treat you nicely.
[Masami, Truck Driver]
I used to be a driver
of box trucks, 10 ton trucks.
When I quit that job, I saw the ad for this company.
It's hard to find construction work, if you're a woman
especially driving a big truck.
So even if I didn't know any details about the job,
I quickly decided to go for it.
We are stared at.
There's a stereotype that if you're female you're a bad driver.
When you go to sites some people react like
It's like they're making fun of us.
They're sort of teasing, sort of harassing
Everyone who drives a truck like this must feel powerful.
Yeah, I'm driving a big truck!
And that's what keeps me working in this job.
And what else keeps me in this job...
In addition to the fact that now I have nice coworkers
It wouldn't be the same if I went to a different job.
That positive feeling is what helps me stay working as a driver.
Even though my salary is low.
When it comes to unloading the trucks
Some are fast and some are slow.
I don't want to lose out to a man.
Partly, I stay in this job because of that.
I think women can work as hard as men can.
Most of all I have a sense of self-pride.
I'm so great!
I used to get satisfaction from working hard
Now that's starting to change.
[Yoshiko Carpenter]
This is the original condition of the house.
See the damage from the rain...
My task here is pasting these papers
I do the on-the-ground work.
There's parts I can do
The parts I can't do are done by my husband.
I started doing this work
without realizing what I was getting into.
It was almost impossible for a female.
Helping my husband was my first job in construction.
What was the reason you started to go
to the construction site with your husband?
That's hard... my husband...
I don't know if I should say this
My husband has bad shoulders
and his arm only goes up this high.
When he has to go to the second floor to work
he can't reach up to put materials up there.
I'm tall and I also have strong shoulders.
I was able to lift things up
and helped carry the materials.
Then my husband wouldn't have to come downstairs
to get everything one at a time.
After all, I'm doing this job
because I like it.
I really like these kinds of things.
First of all it's really interesting
to watch cracks being fixed.
The steps of fixing cracks
it's fun to watch that.
One puts on the paper
another cements it
and the painter comes in
and colors the walls
Those steps are very interesting
interesting to watch
I think the relationship between these steps
and the pleasure from doing them
is similar to dressing kimono.
Like the one who makes the kimono,
who cuts, sews, and wears it,
has a feeling of completion.
I think fixing a house is very similar.
That's what I think.
The situation facing women in different parts of the world
varies significantly.
A key area is that in the global north
women choose to work in construction,
while in the global south,
most of the women simply find it a way to survive.
But it seems as if everywhere women test the boundaries they face.
In both the global north and south,
the idea that labor saving technology and skill training
will automatically eliminate sexual inequality does not appear to be true.
In Third World countries, making jobs easier
often means pushing women out of work.
to tradeswomen in the US.
And sometimes their reactions are identification,
and sometimes they are shocked
at the conditions women in the Third World face.
When I show the images of women from the US to women in India or Thailand,
sometimes the reaction is identification, and sometimes it is envy
at conditions that appear so much better and cleaner than theirs.
Take them to America and train them. She's willing to work.
But we may have more connections than we think.
We all need stronger workers' movements to implement better labor conditions,
access to decent jobs
But you don't let nobody push you to do nothing that you can't.
If you can't pick up that load, don't pick it up. Split it in half.
If women wake up Revolution is going to be easy
Form a union. Sister! Sister! Be active in the union. Sister! Sister!
Have courage to argue. Unite to struggle.
[Domestic and Child Care Workers Group]
who work to survive, to challenge, to transform,
to imagine a different world.
If you demand your rights you will get them.
If you struggle you will achieve much.
Get ready, get ready, Sister Comrade. We have a task to perform. Get ready, get ready, Sister Comrade.

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Transnational Tradeswomen

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