Occupational Hazards in the Electronics Industry: Gendered Repercussions

Abstract

The decentralization of the electronics industry within Thailand has been characterized by gendered and environmental health repercussions. Young women come from all over Thailand to fill the gendered spaces available on the production lines for electronic components. In doing so, many young women also put their long-term health on the line. This paper analyzes the complex and contested environmental health issues brewing in the Northern Regional Industrial Estate in Lamphun, Thailand. The potentiality of environmental hazards within the electronics industry produces a contradictory situation for women workers who have an interest in paid work, but also in a healthy working environment. This paper explores women workers’ perceptions, reactions and modes of resistance and non-resistance to environmental hazards in the Northern Regional Industrial Estate. Using Grown and Sebstad’s (1989) ’livelihood systems’ model as a theoretical framework, the paper analyzes how women workers reconcile their multiple and different interests—occupational health, gendered and economic.