Gendered labour activism in the Vietnamese manufacturing industry

Abstract

This article analyses the nature of female activism within the context of the Vietnamese export-oriented manufacturing industry. It highlights women's potential as change agents within the industrial fabric of Vietnamese society and identifies how gendered perceptions shaped the nature of industrial action in the country. The three examples of industrial action presented here indicate that although the activism undertaken by female rank-and-file workers in industrial zones was informal, it played a crucial role in the progressive changes to labour relations in Vietnam. Further, it shows how women's agency was shaped by their own gender perceptions, which in turn guided their industrial strategies and outcomes.

Regulatory pluralism and the resolution of collective labour disputes in Southeast Asia

“…We begin our explanation of the limits of existing conceptual frameworks with a brief discussion of what is widely recognised to be among the most influential conceptual contributions to IR: Dunlop's (1958) IR systems model. 4 This model, proposed to guide the analysis of IR in national economies, conceives of an IR system as a distinct institutional domain comprising actors, contexts, a body of rules and a shared ideology that binds the system together.…”

“…The critical contexts that shaped the conduct of IR were the technological characteristics of the workplace; market and budgetary constraints; and the locus and distribution of power within the wider society. Finally, the actors shared a common ‘set of ideas and beliefs’ that helped ‘to bind together and integrate the system’ (Dunlop, 1958: 8).…”

“…Regulatory (or legal) pluralism offers a useful theoretical lens through which to identify, and understand the influence of, the multiple sources of regulation within a specific regulatory space. The co-existence of state and other systems of normative ordering has long been recognised in labour law and IR (Dunlop, 1958; Kahn-Freund, 1977), including in the realms of (most relevantly for this paper) collective bargaining (Arthurs, 1996). Regulatory orders may be formal: that is, be comprised of state institutions (courts, legislatures and bureaucracies) and state-enforced rules (constitutions, laws and regulations).…”

Gender Regimes and Cambodian Labor Unions

“…In the Global South, rapid industrialization from the 1980s onward led to an exponential increase in women’s labor force participation (Broadbent and Ford 2008). As is widely acknowledged, however, women’s representation in union leadership roles is not proportionate to their share of union membership, nor has it substantially improved the uptake by unions of issues of importance to them (Chi and van den Broek 2020; Evans 2017; Kirton 2005; Ledwith 2012).…”