Work and Marriage: Attitudes of Women Factory Workers in Malaysia. (Volumes I and II).

Abstract

In recent years, large numbers of young women have been drawn into female-intensive industries in the developing countries. This dissertation examines the impact of such industrial wage employment on the demographic behavior of single women. It focuses on issues related to nuptiality--specifically, dating, mate selection, the value of marriage, marriage timing, and perceptions of conjugal roles-- and links these to changes in familial relationships and working women's autonomy and status resulting from factory work. A central premise of this study is that the effects of factory employment on nuptiality behavior, and on women's overall status, are mediated through changes in their perceptions of their social roles as daughters, peers, potential brides and as individuals. The data for this study derive from an attitudinal survey of 385 never-married Malaysian women, from the Malay, Chinese and Indian ethnic groups, aged 16 to 24 years, who are production workers in electronics and textiles factories in Penang, and from focused in-depth interviews with 32 such women. The study finds that factory work does not effect radical changes in working women's perceptions of their social roles nor in their social relationships, and that working women respond to their new circumstances with a set of existing values. The study underscores the substantial impact of cultural factors in determining how individuals respond to social change. It also shows that factory work for young women alters nuptiality behavior by altering the social networks within which potential mates are met, by altering women's preferences concerning the characteristics sought in a husb and , and by edging the timing of marriage to the upper bound of the optimal age range as defined by an individual's social group. Wage employment does not serve to diminish the value of marriage, nor is it found to alter women's perceptions of conjugal roles and gender roles. It contributes towards enhancing women's status in so far as it provides women with an opportunity to participate in the "modern" world, to gain some economic independence, and to function effectively in organizational and social settings beyond the family environment.