Beyond Safety Nets: Linking Social Protection to Technology/Industrial Policies for Informal Women Workers

Abstract

This article will trace the trends regarding job loss and the informalization and casualization of women’s work in the garments and other labor-intensive industries in the ‘higher’ wage countries of Southeast Asia (focusing in particular on the Philippines and Thailand). Using the Philippines and other cases as well as new openings in the wake of the collapse of the Cancun WTO meetings as a means to think through new possibilities the article will argue that in some countries, the specificity of context may offer new opportunities to tie the goal of providing social protection to more general technology and industrial/sectoral policies—as well as related educational and science policies—in ways that can benefit and help stabilize incomes in the ‘people’s sector.’