“This trend towards feminization of employment in Asian countries resulted from employers’ needs for cheaper and more “flexible” sources of labor, which meant more casualization of labor, a shift to part-time work or piece-rate contracts, and insistence on greater freedom of hiring and firing. All these aspects of what is now described as “labor market flexibility” became necessary once external competitiveness became the significant goal of domestic policy makers and defined the contours within which domestic and foreign employers in these economies operated. Women workers were preferred by employers in export activities primarily because of the inferior conditions of work and pay that they were usually willing to accept. They had lower reservation wages than their male counterparts, were more willing to accept longer hours and unpleasant and often unhealthy or hazardous factory conditions, typically did not unionize or engage in other forms of collective bargaining to improve conditions, and did not ask for permanent contracts. They were thus easier to hire and fire at will, or according to external demand conditions. Life-cycle changes such as marriage and childbirth could be used as proximate causes to terminate their employment and engage a younger and fresher set of female workers. Greater flexibility was thus afforded to employers to offer less-secure contracts. Further, in certain sectors of the newer “sunrise” industries of the late twentieth century such as computer hardware and consumer electronics, the nature of the assembly line work—repetitive and detailed, with an emphasis on manual dexterity and fineness of elaboration—was felt to be especially suited to women. The high “burnout” associated with some of these activities meant that employers preferred to hire workers who could be periodically replaced, which was easier when the employed group consisted of young, mostly unmarried, women who could move on to other phases of their life cycle.”

Jayati Ghosh, Women, Labor, and Capital Accumulation in Asia