ABSTRACT
By the late 1980s, concurrent with political liberalisation, Taiwan was experiencing a rapid economic restructuring, namely capital outflow and deindustrialisation. ‘Gender and global capitalist expansion’ is a well-established area of academic interest and policy concern, and Taiwan has been an integral part of the literature. The Taiwanese experience suggests that affect towards working women informed by a cultural understanding of these women not as ‘women workers’ but as ‘devoted family members’ might bear political potency upon which feminists seeking gender equality could strategise. In terms of gender and labour relations, permeating in Taiwan at the time was the industrial employers’ lament for labour shortage, while many middle-aged, senior workers were unlawfully laid off or lost their jobs without proper compensation. Yet, concurrently, married women became the new favourite workforce among many small manufacturing producers such as in Homei, because young single women were no longer available.
