Chan, Lean Heng (1998) Educational work with factory women in Malaysia. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Most women workers' education focuses on women's objective-material
situation namely employment conditions and rights as workers. Hence,
consciousness-raising on exploitation and the importance of workers unity are the
usual agendas. Women's subjectivities, their individual personally lived experiences
are rarely taken on board. Even in situations where gender agendas are covered,
their unspoken thoughts, repressed feelings and pains, especially the personally felt
emotional subordination tend to be overlooked. This thesis explores how silenced
experiences of emotional subordination, powerlessness and inferiority can be taken
on board in and as educational work with factory women.
Guided by principles of participatory research and feminist research I used
multiple methods to review current and past educational work with factory women in
Malaysia, to explore a way of approaching and doing educational work that is
empowering for factory women and that is based on their lived experiences.
Specifically the research (i) undertook a historical and critical review of women
workers education in Malaysia and identified the neglected dimensions 1 (ii) probed
the lived gendered experiences of factory women, and (iii) evolved a pedagogy that
can evoke and reconstitute silenced experiences of emotional subordination. Storying,
as a narrative methodology for negotiating and constructing meaning from experience
(and practice) frames the epistemological and methodological approach to this study.
The study established that although emotional suffering is only one dimension
of factory women's lived experiences and one dimension of women's subordination,
it is however, a critical area to address in educational work concerned with factory
women's empowerment, given the pervasiveness of debilitating emotional
subjectivities amongst them. Story-telling-sharing in small groups was found to be
effective in facilitating the constructive unfolding of differences and commonalities
while also fostering an emotionally safe space in which women can rebuild self-esteem
and confidence and discover solidarity. Indeed, story-telling-sharing that
incorporates processes of reflective talking and making sense is the educational
method par excellence. It commences with lived experiences and experienced feelings
to reconstitute women's subjectivities. These findings bring significant insights to the
pedagogy and content of educational work with women on the global assembly line,
and for women and workers' education in general.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Women employees -- Malaysia, Factories -- Malaysia -- Employees, Employees -- Training of -- Malaysia, Male domination (Social structure) -- Malaysia
Official Date:	November 1998
Dates:	Date Event November 1998 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Continuing Education
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Duke, C. (Christopher) ; Leicester, Mal
Sponsors:	Universiti Sains Malaysia
Extent:	ix, 301 p.
Language:	eng

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