Hope for China's Migrant Women Workers

Zhang Ye

Civil society groups are emerging to aid migrant women in southern China

More than 10 million migrant laborers work in Guangdong Province, according to China's 2000 national census, and the Guangdong Statistical Bureau estimates that more than 60 percent of these are women. Migrant workers tend to staff wholly foreign-owned enterprises, joint ventures, township and village enterprises, and private enterprises that produce toys, clothing, footwear, electronics, and other consumer goods. Female workers usually come to Guangdong from poorer provinces along the Yangzi River such as Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, and Sichuan. They find jobs in Guangdong factories through labor bureaus, from relatives and friends, or by word of mouth.

Guangdong's economy has grown more than 14 percent per year on average during the past decade, and the province has accounted for about half of the country's total GDP growth. Guangdong alone generates more than 40 percent of China's foreign trade in terms of value. While both the central and local governments have recognized the indispensable contribution of migrant labor, so far government policy has provided migrant labor few protections.

Labor on the move

China's limited supply of arable land is unable to absorb the large supply of surplus labor in the countryside (see The CBR, March-April 2002). At the same time, the cost of agricultural products has increased by 10 percent each year over the last decade, according to China Development Review, and most of China's agricultural products have already lost their comparative advantage in the international market. Farmers also often find it difficult to sell their products in domestic markets, in part because consumption patterns in China's prosperous cities are shifting away from grains and other basic foodstuffs and because the government has cut back the resources it devotes to agricultural development in recent years. Large numbers of farmers have thus left the land to find jobs in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, and the cities of the Pearl River delta in Guangdong.

The current residential permit (hukou) system prevents migrant laborers from staying in the big cities permanently, however. Without an urban hukou, farmers are technically not allowed to live and work in the cities and cannot benefit from the social safety net the Chinese government provides to urban citizens (see Hukou Reform Targets Urban-Rural Divide). From 1949 to the early 1980s, the hukou and work unit systems prevented labor mobility and the development of true labor markets. As a result, most of the rural population was tied to the land.

But with economic reforms came plentiful urban jobs--largely in construction, food services, and factories--that urban populations alone could not fill. Despite the hukou and work unit restrictions on mobility, large numbers of migrant laborers have flooded the big cities in the past 10 years. This wave of migration has broken the original rigid system in many ways. Local farmers are no longer tied tightly to their farmland. They can move to big cities whenever there are jobs and can usually manage to make some kind of living.

Though the central government has recognized urban economies' need for rural labor, it is still concerned about urban overpopulation, and thus far social policies and government practices have lagged behind social change. Each city still handles migrant labor at its own discretion. Policies vary according to local political, economic, and social circumstances. Often the rules and policies discriminate against migrant laborers. Official reports on migrant labor tend to emphasize the negative side, such as rising crime rates, environmental degradation, and difficulties implementing family planning and other policies. And urban residents and local city governments exclude migrant workers from urban political, cultural, educational, and social arenas so that they are essentially confined to isolated factory communities or industrial complexes.

Even in places like the Pearl River delta, where a larger labor force is needed and migrant laborers drive economic development, the system still fails to guarantee a migrant worker's quality of life and job security. In Shenzhen, where economic growth has been the most rapid and most sustained in China over the past 20 years, migrant laborers were responsible for as much as 70 percent of the growth of industrial output in the mid-1990s, according to Dr. Liu Kaiming, a research fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Observation in Shenzhen. Nonetheless, most local governments do not recognize the contribution of migrant labor to big city development and expansion.

Migrants suffer rights violations

Chinese laws and regulations recognize citizens' "equal rights in employment and selection of jobs," yet the rights and interests of migrant workers are often violated. More often than not migrant workers face significant problems in the workplace.

Though statistics show that the migrant labor male-to-female ratio nationwide is 2:1, in the Pearl River delta the ratio is reversed.

Most of the laborers do not have contracts with their employers, and those that do have minimal power when negotiating working conditions and benefits and thus end up simply agreeing to the terms and conditions offered by the employers.

Migrant laborers typically work long hours, averaging 11 to 12 hours per day. Many factories do not observe weekends, and workers work seven days a week, even though China's Labor Law guarantees workers 8-hour workdays, 40-hour workweeks, and at least one day off per week.

Migrant wages are often well below the local legal minimum wage, and some factories force workers to pay fees the government intended factories to pay--such as job introduction fees and fees for permits that allow workers to stay temporarily in Guangdong--so that workers receive even less than their set wage.

The large majority of migrant laborers do not enjoy benefits such as medical insurance and social welfare services to which citizens with a local hukou are entitled.

Supervisors often infringe upon migrant laborers' personal rights and dignity, and physical assault and personal humiliation are not uncommon.

Workplace injuries are common, often because factories do not meet safety standards. Workers are often exposed to industrial hazards and pollution.

Few of the nonstate-owned factories have organized labor unions, and thus workers lack an appropriate channel through which to voice their concerns. Even the factories that have a branch of the government-sanctioned national labor union (All-China Federation of Trade Unions [ACFTU]) do not always improve their working environments because, in many cases, these labor unions don't really represent the workers' interests.

Women overlooked

Chinese government development programs tend to overlook women's roles and rights, and existing policies do not favor women's employment and career development. Even compared with 10 years ago, Chinese women's social status has declined in many ways, found a 2001 survey by the All-China Women's Federation, a Chinese organization that has a close relationship with the government. For instance, the percentage of women in politics has fallen, and women's employment opportunities remain limited. Chinese rural women, who make up the bulk of women migrants, have been pushed to the bottom of the social hierarchy, suffering more than urban women in the process of modernization.

In addition, these women migrants face poorer working conditions than their male counterparts. Though statistics show that the migrant labor male-to-female ratio nationwide is 2:1, in the Pearl River delta the ratio is reversed. Job segregation in the delta pushes women into the unskilled, labor-intensive, and lower-paid apparel, footwear, and toy industries. The average monthly salary for a woman migrant worker in Guangdong is RMB300-RMB500 ($37-$62), according to a 2000 report by the Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In contrast, male migrant workers generally earn RMB500 or more a month. Salary levels have stagnated since the early 1990s. Given inflation and increases in the cost of living, salaries have fallen in real terms.

China's Labor Law guarantees women workers maternity leave and protection for their reproductive health. Yet the country's vast pool of cheap labor makes it easy for employers to refuse to pay maternity leave or simply to fire women workers when they become pregnant. In many factories, the working conditions and environment are harmful to women's health, particularly in the footwear and garment factories. The chemical fumes, unbearable heat, and long hours of standing not only affect women's general physical health but are also detrimental to their reproductive health.

Migrant women workers tend to be naive and unassertive, leaving them more vulnerable to sexual harassment and personal abuse than local women. A few cases in which migrant women workers became mistresses of Hong Kong or Taiwan businessmen caused concern among local authorities, who sometimes identify migrant women as a threat to the stability of marriages and family. Government-sponsored "strike hard" campaigns launched in Guangdong often target these mistresses, many of whom are already marginalized migrant women.

Migrant women workers in the Pearl River delta also typically shoulder large family responsibilities. The money they remit home is often the main source of income and essential support for family expenses such as housing, parent hospitalization, and sibling education or marriage.

Many of these migrant women, most of whom are aged 18-25, become trapped by circumstance. Because they are not official urban residents, they cannot stay in the big cities forever. But home may no longer have a place for them either--after living in the cities, many young women have trouble readjusting to rural conditions. The new and unstable position they find themselves in presents psychological issues and other dilemmas.

The government response

The central government has recognized the constraints of the original rural-urban dichotomy guaranteed by the hukou system, and various government agencies have suggested strategies for abolishing the system. Indeed, in some places, hukou reform has already begun.

But for now, in most places, local protectionism continues to resist fundamental changes in the system. Local governments prefer to use migrant workers as a reliable source of cheap labor, and rarely consider them when formulating urban plans or urban social welfare policies. And because the migrant population pays large fees every year to the local authorities to obtain the various permissions necessary for them to work and live temporarily in Guangdong, migrant workers are cash cows for local bureaucracies. In Shenzhen, for example, taxes levied on migrant laborers account for 70 percent of local government tax revenue, according to Liu Kaiming. Local governments therefore have significant incentives to maintain the status quo.

Local officials also tend to be ambivalent about the poor labor standards of foreign-invested companies. Because overseas investments provide the bulk of revenue for many local economies, local officials generally would rather protect the interests of the companies than the rights and interests of the migrant workers.

The Chinese media play an increasingly important role in raising awareness about the situation of migrant labor. Guangdong newspapers work closely with the women's federation, the labor union, and the local judiciary, and the media have exposed many major labor accidents and serious legal cases involving migrant labor.

Local officials and urban residents have formulated strong interest groups that oppose changes to the system. In Beijing, until 2000, more than 100 kinds of jobs were not open to migrant labor. Now, some low-paid jobs that many Beijing residents are unwilling to take, such as street sweeping or garbage collecting, are open to migrants. In Shenzhen, the most open city in China, only white-collar workers with higher education can obtain a local hukou. While changes in the hukou system are inevitable in the long run, the local governments that are the actual beneficiaries of the current system will resist fundamental change. Until such change occurs, migrant laborers' disadvantaged position will continue.

A few bright spots: Civil society

China is trying to move in the direction of the rule of law. As part of the central government's efforts to join the international system in the past 20 years, China has joined and ratified over 20 international treaties and agreements to guarantee and protect women's--and indeed all citizens'--basic rights. China has among the best legal protections of women's rights on the books, but weak enforcement has stymied improvements in the position of migrant women workers.

In the past 10 years, China's nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been playing an increasingly important role in the delivery of social services. Horizontal linkages among NGOs, as well as between NGOs and other sectors, in China and abroad have enhanced NGOs' advocacy capacity. In Guangdong, linkages among Chinese and foreign NGOs, multinational corporations, and scholars are quietly forming. Joint activities in this region include the provision of services and assistance to migrant labor.

Several groups have begun to focus attention on and provide services to migrant women workers. The following are just a few examples.

Over the past five years, teams of scholars from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Qinghua Center for Contemporary China Studies, and Guangdong Women's Cadre Training School, among others, have conducted a series of studies about the disadvantaged position of migrant laborers. They have published their findings in a series of books and articles to push for policy change. They have also provided education and training in law, reproductive health, self-protection, and social skills for migrant women workers.

Some traditional mass organizations, such as the ACFTU and the All-China Women's Federation, have shifted from a Communist Party-line-focused approach to a service-focused approach. With the support of foreign foundations and companies, they have turned their attention to the well-being of migrant women workers, addressing issues such as legal rights and health conditions.

The Chinese media play an increasingly important role in raising awareness about the situation of migrant labor. Guangdong newspapers work closely with the women's federation, the labor union, and the local judiciary, and the media have exposed many major labor accidents and serious legal cases involving migrant labor. As a result, government agencies have forced some factories to improve their safety measures and have levied fines. And thanks to media-fueled social pressure, the victimized workers won their lawsuits and received compensation more easily than in cases where such attention was lacking. As labor issues become an important social topic, more factories are paying attention to labor standards and migrant women's working and living conditions.

Some migrant workers in Guangdong have organized themselves into support groups, often based on their home provinces. Members of these groups provide each other with information and arrange lodging for new arrivals.

Foreign NGOs and foundations are working with local NGOs to provide services and training for migrant workers, particularly female workers. For example, the Asia Foundation has been active in Guangdong since 1999 working with the local labor union, women's federation, and university-based research centers to provide counseling and services to tens of thousands of migrant women workers. Oxfam Hong Kong has provided women workers with a van not only for transportation but also for medical care and other social service activities. The Global Alliance for Workers and Communities has launched activities in factories where the majority of workers are women.

Numerous multinational corporations that benefit from their own business and investment in the region have also begun to recognize the importance of addressing some of these issues. Some multinational corporations support intermediaries and NGOs in their work concerning labor standards, rights, and justice for women workers (see Social Justice for Working Women in Guangdong).

These various players are not only helping migrant workers solve legal issues, but are also creating pressure on society to improve the working and living conditions of migrant workers.

The development of civil society has created a new opportunity to enhance women's roles and rights. Both the state and the market have failed in the past to provide women with equal opportunities or necessary protections. Citizen participation can help supply these public goods and protect worker rights. As NGOs play an increasingly important role in China, they are becoming tangible providers of services for needy people. Gradually, they are coming to act as advocates for social change. This kind of bottom-up approach will encourage further opening and will gradually change Chinese society and, one hopes, improve the lot of all of China's migrant workers, both male and female.

Hukou Reform Targets Urban-Rural Divide

Recent reforms to China's household registration (hukou) system have begun to redress the historical bifurcation of Chinese society into urban and rural classes. Identification booklets, also called hukou, are issued to all Chinese and identify the carrier as a rural or non-rural resident. Each urban administrative entity (town, city, etc.) issues its own hukou and provides full access to social services such as education only to its own hukou holders.

The document and the symbol

More than just an identification document, the hukou symbolizes China's two-tiered society. China adapted its hukou system from other communist countries during the famines of the 1950s to distinguish farmers, who could grow food, from urbanites, who needed grain rations. During the 1960s and 1970s, the system hardened to the point that peasants could be arrested just for entering cities. In the 1980s and 1990s, most urban areas relaxed these barriers to travel, which, along with economic reforms, prompted an influx of rural migrants. Until recently, migrants have had to obtain temporary residence permits to remain in urban centers and have had to pay excessive fees for social services. Police can still summarily expel from cities any migrants without residence documents.

The reforms enable rural migrants with stable jobs and fixed residences to register for the first time as urban residents. In one sense, the reforms simply acknowledge the flow of rural migrants to cities in recent decades. In a deeper sense, liberalization of the hukou system will help to improve labor mobility and to accord some measure of equal treatment to rural inhabitants in the cities, who have traditionally been treated as second-class citizens.

The basic reforms

Hukou reforms differ from locality to locality but set roughly the same qualifications for entitlement to urban registration. Basically, a person and each of his or her immediate family members can obtain an urban hukou if he or she has a fixed residence and stable work in an urban area, usually defined as more than one year on the job. These two qualifications were laid out in Chinese Communist Party Central Committee Document No. 11 of November 2000, which outlined China's urbanization strategy for the Tenth Five-Year Plan (2001-05). Areas involved in hukou reform also offer urban registration to those who purchase a local commercial housing unit. Given the relatively high price of commercial housing in China, this provision aims to attract urban investment from outside entrepreneurs. Urban centers also often offer hukou to holders of graduate degrees to lure professionals from other areas.

Since mid-2001, China has expanded the geographic scope of its hukou system reforms, as prescribed by Central Committee Document No. 11. During 2001, about 600,000 rural residents acquired urban hukou, according to China's State Commission on Restructuring the Economy (SCORE). State Council Circular No. 6 of March 2001 mandated that all small cities (those with populations of less than 100,000) should grant hukou to residents with fixed jobs and homes beginning October 1, 2001. The reforms now encompass all towns and small cities in Anhui, Guangdong, Hebei, Jiangsu, Shandong, Sichuan, and Zhejiang provinces.

Reforms also extend to several large cities, including Beijing, Chongqing, and Shanghai; Hefei, Anhui; Jinan, Shandong; Ningbo, Zhejiang; and Shijiazhuang, Hebei. Guangdong has reportedly eliminated the urban-rural distinction altogether and no longer stamps hukou as "urban" or "rural." Nevertheless, rural residents still try to obtain a Guangzhou hukou to access the city's social services.

A SCORE official recently told the China Economic Times that problems relating to unemployment, the social safety net, and pollution precluded most large cities from trying hukou reforms. The several large cities that had initiated reforms, he said, had done so because of their ability to absorb significant numbers of outsiders.

These cities have placed significant limits on eligibility for urban registration, however. Outsiders who qualify for Beijing's hukou, for example, include only educated professionals, commercial home buyers, and entrepreneurs with firms employing more than 100 people. Other large cities limit urban registration to qualified residents in designated counties and towns lying within their administrative boundaries. (In China, a large city--defined as having more than a million people--can have administrative authority over outlying counties and small cities, though they might be separately chartered urban entities.) A rural migrant, in other words, still cannot acquire a hukou to live in a big city proper--only a hukou to live in urban areas situated along the city's periphery. The exception is Shijiazhuang, which has offered an urban hukou to any resident with a fixed home and job since August 2001. Some economists note, though, that most rural migrants would be unable to afford the cost of living in big cities even if allowed to settle there.

Accepting reality

The geographic expansion of hukou reform is a bow to necessity, given the flow of rural inhabitants to urban areas in recent decades. China Information Daily reported last November that, from 1982 to 2000, more than 200 million rural Chinese moved to urban areas--more than half in the 1995-2000 period alone--attracted by jobs in the manufacturing and service sectors. Of the total flow during the last 20 years, roughly 100 million lacked legal status in the form of temporary residence permits or urban hukou. China Information Daily predicted that 180 million rural Chinese would move to urban areas by 2010, as hukou reform makes internal migration easier.

It's all about education

Why would rural migrants with stable work and a fixed dwelling in an urban area feel the need to change hukou? The main reason is their children's education, according to a Chinese labor economist who has studied hukou reform in Fenghua, a small city within the jurisdiction of Ningbo. According to the economist, Fenghua's rural hukou holders must pay RMB3,500 ($437) for their children's yearly primary school tuition, inclusive of various book fees. For urban hukou holders, primary school costs only RMB1,200 ($150) per child per year. This disparity is typical of most urban centers. Moreover, discriminatory education policies make it more difficult for rural hukou holders than urban hukou holders to enter universities. An urban hukou could thus mean the difference between a lifetime of manual labor and a high-paying, white-collar career for one's children.

Reforms in Jinan

Jinan, Shandong's provincial seat, is one of the few large Chinese cities that have undertaken hukou reforms. Greater Jinan encompasses four outlying counties and one small city, home to 3.3 million rural hukou holders, or 58 percent of greater Jinan's 5.6 million residents. Since 1997, residents with a college degree or above, as well as investors and buyers of commercial housing, have been able to obtain urban hukou. In August 2001, the Jinan city government also began to allow rural hukou holders in the outlying small city and counties to acquire an urban hukou at no charge. To register as urbanites, applicants need a fixed residence and stable work, corroborated by an employer's contract. City officials say that roughly 40,000 rural residents in the designated areas have switched to an urban hukou since August.

The recent reforms have had a minimal impact on Jinan society, according to the Public Security Bureau (PSB), which, as in most Chinese cities, oversees household registration. The reason, the PSB said, was that those who have changed hukou had lived in the city long before the reforms were announced. Jinan has not experienced an influx of migrants since August. The requirement that migrants have steady work before changing hukou also precluded the possibility of new urban hukou holders competing with Jinan's unemployed for jobs. By the same token, PSB officials said, Jinan would wait three to five years before allowing rural hukou holders in the city proper to obtain an urban hukou, to guard against potential problems with vagrancy and environmental damage.

Is hukou reform too slow?

The principal obstacle to more extensive hukou reforms is the fear among city leaders that urban social welfare systems cannot support large inflows of rural migrants, according to one economist. He argued that this fear was unfounded, citing the numerous public assets that cities could use to generate the proceeds necessary to ensure social welfare coverage for expanded city populations. The economist explained, for example, that city governments owned all land within their jurisdiction and could easily sell this asset piecemeal and tax real estate transactions to raise funds. Another untapped source of social welfare funds is the farmland that peasants leave behind when they move to urban areas. To protect themselves against unemployment or other urban hardships, migrants should be allowed to obtain "back-up" funds by selling or mortgaging their land.

The significance of hukou reform

A lack of labor mobility has long been an odd feature of the Chinese economy. Close to 25 million urban workers have been laid off since 1997, and economists estimate that China's excess rural labor force is 150 to 200 million. One obvious solution to these problems would be to encourage laid-off and surplus workers to move to eastern provinces that offer manufacturing and service sector jobs. While the hukou system has not stopped the flow of rural workers to urban centers, it has impeded their integration into those areas and their access to the most prized jobs. Hukou reforms, therefore, should allocate labor more rationally by making it easier for workers to settle in areas where their labor is needed most. Moreover, because the hukou system perpetuates China's longstanding urban-rural divide, these reforms are an unprecedented step toward dismantling a social structure that, according to some economists and policymakers, denies "national treatment" to rural inhabitants.

--Joe Young

Joe Young is a foreign service officer in the Economic Section of the US Embassy in Beijing.

Social Justice for Working Women in Guangdong

Multinational companies that manufacture or have their goods manufactured in China have come under scrutiny in recent years for the working conditions at their facilities. A few companies, such as leading apparel marketer Levi Strauss & Co. (LS&CO), have launched a range of measures that attempt to improve the conditions in their suppliers' factories and help local communities. LS&CO, with 2001 sales of $4.3 billion in more than 100 countries, has roughly 16,700 employees worldwide. The company has a strong business presence in the Asia-Pacific region, including a manufacturing presence in Hong Kong and China (primarily Guangdong) through contractors. The company estimates that 28,000 employees work in its contracting facilities in China; about 80 percent are women. (This figure does not include licensee and affiliate production.)

LS&CO routinely audits all of its contractors for compliance with Global Sourcing and Operating Guidelines, a code of conduct that directs business practices such as fair employment, worker health and safety, and environmental standards. This code, based in part on international standards developed by the International Labor Organization, has led the way in improving working conditions in apparel factories throughout the world. If LS&CO determines that a business partner is not complying with these guidelines, the company requires the partner to correct the problem within a specified time period. If a contractor fails to comply, LS&CO will terminate the business relationship.

The company also seeks input and recommendations from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to improve its internal monitoring process. LS&CO actively participates in the Fair Labor Association (a collaborative effort among the business, NGO, and university communities aimed at protecting workers' rights and improving independent monitoring systems) and the Ethical Trading Initiative.

Supporting NGO initiatives

LS&CO goes beyond the factories to help support local communities through the Levi Strauss Foundation. In Asia, LS&CO and the Levi Strauss Foundation give more than $2 million annually to local communities, of which around $400,000 annually has been committed to China (including Hong Kong) for the past three years. Since 1999, the company has extended its grantmaking activities to benefit the communities in China from which it sources, with significant grants to NGOs for projects in the Pearl River delta region.

The foundation's main initiative in China so far is a $300,000 Asia Foundation project to help migrant women factory workers in Guangdong through legal rights, health, and education programs. Known as the Social Justice for Working Women Program, this project offers much-needed services to women workers of southern Guangdong through Women Workers' Legal Aid Centers, Women Workers' Mobile Health Services, and Women Workers' Education and Counseling Centers.

According to the Asia Foundation, the popularity of the program has encouraged local government service providers to offer these support services on a regular basis, whereas they had just offered emergency assistance in the past. The foundation notes that local governments "have since endorsed" minimum labor rights standards for migrant workers.

The need for services

The Asia Foundation identified the above services, in consultation with the Guangdong Women's Federation, the Guangdong Labor Union, and the Qinghua University Research Center on Contemporary China (which collaborates with the Guangdong Women's Cadre Training School), as the most effective ways to address the current needs of women workers in Guangdong. Because the average education level of women migrant workers is junior middle school--some have only completed primary school, and fewer have finished senior middle school--very few of these women have much knowledge of the legal and health issues that concern them.

Moreover, the Guangdong Labor Union's health checkups have shown that health problems are common among women workers, who, along with gender-specific complaints, also suffer from respiratory diseases and high blood pressure. In some factories, working conditions harm workers' health. For instance, in footwear factories, workers may be exposed to poisons in the glue used for shoe making; in welding and metallurgical factories, workers may be exposed to dust and poisons in the paint. Workers in garment and toy factories can suffer exposure to dust and excessive heat and noise, and workers in wooden handicraft factories are sometimes exposed to dust, heat, and toxic paint.

Women Workers' Legal Aid Centers
One of the most important services of the Women Workers' Legal Aid Centers is the legal counseling the Guangdong Women's Federation provides to migrant women workers. Migrant workers have little, if any, knowledge of their rights as workers, as women, and as members of Chinese society. With the aid of lawyers from the women's federation, migrant women and other workers are able to obtain better access to justice in cases ranging from physical abuse, factory injuries, and divorce to labor and property disputes.

In 2001 alone, the Guangdong Women's Federation handled more than 50 legal cases on behalf of migrant women in roughly 10 cities across the province. According to the Asia Foundation, the cases involved compensation for workplace injuries, nonpayment of wages, bigamy, and divorce. Most of the federation's clients won their cases.

Last year, the federation distributed more than 21,000 copies of Learn to Protect Yourself, a handbook covering basic legal rights, to migrant workers and drafted a report on the eligibility of citizens for legal aid support services. To raise awareness of the importance of legal aid, as well as garner public support, the women's federation published 15 articles on the program's activities and legal cases in local newspapers in 2000. The news column "Self-Protection of Migrant Women Workers"--started by the project and published in the Yang Cheng Evening News--has become very popular among migrant women, many of whom send their own articles for publication in the column.

The women's federation also operates four telephone hotlines, which handled more than 7,000 inquiries in 2001. Most of the questions dealt with legal issues such as labor disputes, labor contracts, and divorce. More hotlines may be set up in the future, depending on funding and human resources.

Women Workers' Mobile Health Services
Under the Women Workers' Mobile Health Services program, a team of health professionals travels throughout southern Guangdong offering free medical advice, health education, and physical checkups to women factory and other workers. Before the program was set up, the Women's Department of the Guangdong Labor Union analyzed factory conditions and their relation to women workers' health and hygiene. The findings suggested a need for "onsite health and hygiene education, counseling, and checkup services for at-risk female factory workers." The absence of preventive health education and the limited access to basic healthcare for women workers is a significant problem in the province.

These mobile health services, which benefited more than 5,000 migrant and other workers in 2001, travel to 12 factories every month. In addition, women's health fairs took place last year in township and municipal facilities in eight localities. HIV/AIDS awareness has been introduced into some of the educational materials and services, along with breast cancer protection and infectious illness prevention information. Women who are found to have health problems are introduced to hospitals for treatment.

Follow-up efforts by the labor union's women's department have shown that, after receiving these materials and services, women workers are more aware of how to protect their health and are more willing to join the labor union-initiated health insurance program, which covers much of the cost of their medical care. According to the Asia Foundation, the project has included several presentations for more than 100,000 women workers, safety courses for women union members (not exclusively for migrant women), and consultations on regulations specific to women workers.

Women Workers' Education and Counseling Centers
The Guangdong Provincial Women Officials' Training Center oversees four Women Workers' Education and Counseling Centers, which provide education and counseling programs for women workers. These programs cover self-esteem, legal rights and protection, healthcare, gender relations, HIV/AIDS awareness, personal hygiene, and interpersonal skills in the workplace. The center developed new materials to educate women workers in these areas and distributed them to more than 5,000 women workers. In 2001, the centers provided psychological counseling to about 250 women. The most common complaints are adjustment to new working and living environments, interpersonal relationships, labor disputes, and reproductive health. The centers were first established in Zhongshan and Dongguan in 2000 and will be expanded to Panyu District of Guangzhou and Nanhai District of Foshan in 2002.

The project also held the first-ever Conference on Guangdong Provincial Social Policies and Services for Migrant Workers, which was cosponsored by the provincial government and attended by representatives from local governments, domestic and foreign-invested firms, and NGOs. After the conference, some local government agencies improved their policies and practices concerning migrant workers. For instance, the local authorities now handle migrant workers' complaints about delays in salary payments more effectively.

Difficulties and encouragement

The project has run into difficulties, largely from the women migrants' employers, even though most training and counseling sessions are held on Sunday, a day off for most workers. These companies complain that some of the lectures are too sensitive or provocative and are reluctant to let the project team come into the factories. The project staff must often spend months explaining the project and its purpose to the employers to persuade them that the project will benefit their workers without having a negative effect on their business. Even so, only a limited number of factories--usually those with better conditions--have agreed to let the project team into the factories for lectures.

Getting local government officials' cooperation has also been difficult. It often takes months to get local officials to agree to let the project go ahead, because they are concerned that some of the lectures and counseling may upset the investors that generate most of the local economy's revenue. Local officials are willing to cooperate only once they are convinced that the program will benefit both sides.

Despite such difficulties, testimony from the women migrants themselves seems to indicate that the project is having the desired effect. Interviews conducted with women who have attended project training courses since 2000 clearly indicate that the women find them useful.

One 24-year-old migrant woman from Sichuan was excited to learn more about reproductive health, according to Asia Foundation follow-up interviews. She and her friends had heard stories about women who had become pregnant or contracted sexually transmitted diseases but had never been told exactly how to prevent pregnancy or such diseases. After participating in the program, she said, she feels she knows how to protect herself and whom to ask for help if she were to find herself in such a situation.

A 28-year-old woman from Hunan echoed those sentiments and added that she now has more self-confidence and knows what to do if she experiences health problems or if her rights are infringed. Indeed, the interviews indicate that women particularly value information on sexual and reproductive health. Perhaps even more important is the sense of self-empowerment they seem to have gained. Many of the interviewees note that, after participating in some of the project's training sessions, they have the confidence to stand up for their rights for the first time in their lives.

--Virginia A. Hulme

Virginia A. Hulme is associate editor of The CBR.

Zhang Ye
is China country director at The Asia Foundation, Beijing.
This paper was originally presented at the China Supplier Workshop on Labor Practices and Corporate Social Responsibility, October 22-23, 2001, in Shenzhen, China.

Last Updated: 26-Apr-02