ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the challenges and opportunities author encountered when he conducted field work in Taiwan's satellite factories in the summer of 1989 and the beginning of 1990. On the shop floor, as men and women routinely interacted with one another, he encountered multidimensional power relationships structured around the patriarchal system, involving the Chinese women workers and himself. The pervasive degradation of women in the satellite factory system made it impossible for him, a female Chinese feminist, to confine myself totally to the observer role. At a banquet celebrating the newborn baby of a female worker, a man who was introduced to him as a lawyer joined my table. The assistance of indigenous translators and research assistants is freely acknowledged in many accounts by First World researchers who have done fieldwork in Asia.
