I had the idea to show former factory workers a state sanctioned short film - directed by filmmaker Wee Li Lin- made in celebration of a generation of workers labelled by as the Merdeka(liberation) generation. The  intention was to see how they felt about it and whether the film reflected their experiences or otherwise. The short film portrays a worker sacrificing her studies to generate income for her family through factory labour.





Like many other things in the research initiator’s life, that idea did not materialise. However, I did manage to show this to the main researcher of the book Theatres of Memory, Loh Kah Seng.

He responded by pointing out the fact that women workers felt more excitement than dread about entering the workforce,

“in my interviews, what came out most was the excitement of working in a factory - which is opposite of the initial reaction in the film. There would have been women who had to forgo their studies to work but they would have been the minority. Joining a factory and getting regular wages was very new and exciting in the 60s and 70s. Economic power and social power.“

Former factory worker Zainab Mahmood speaks about assembling radios for the Dutch company Phillips when she was 17. She worked at the factory for 13 years and then took a break to provide care for her firstborn before working at other companies like Seagate and Hitachi. At Seagate, she was part of the quality control team that ensured the functionality of the hard disks. She shared how she was happy at work because she was with her friends. She also mentioned that time went very fast because the work was very busy and intriguing to her.

Nadia Florman worked at the factories on a contractual basis and was not permanent staff. She took up the job during school holidays and other situations when she neded the income. She is not part of the Merdeka generation and worked at the factories during the early 2000s.

Nadia Florman mentions how her mother was “bored out of her mind” at home and found factory work to be a productive way to have some time away from home. Having acquired a degree of financial autonomy, her mother could also provide financially for the children sometimes.

This point is also mentioned by Loh Kah Seng as he states that “for many of these workers, assembly lines and production floors were places of opportunity and a social life beyond the household. This helped transcend the daily monotony of routine assembly-line production.”¹

Here are some advertisements in newspapers in the 1970s at the time calling for for female workers to join the factory workforce.



Due to rapid industrialisation and the accumulation of foreign capital, Singapore was able to expand its industrial base which created new sources of labour. This meant that women were also being coerced to join the labour market.

In addition to these new sources of employment, domestic labour was still very much part of most women’s lives. This was more of an addition than a shift. Work in the household was now in combination with work in the commercial space. In the manufacturing industry, women were more sought after than men. One could say that these commercial spaces would not be able to exist to the extent that they do without women.

Women also dominate sectors of manufacturing as emphasized by Linda Lim, “the exclusive demand of electronics multinationals for female labour induced a new supply of such labour, facilitated by host country conditions and host government policies in a number of ways”.² In Singapore, flatted factories which were located in housing estates gave these (Multinational Corporations)MNCs “access to a ready pool of labour”. Wages for women were also lower than men because women were seen as secondary income earners. Zainab Mahmood reaffirms this notion as she states that income from factory labour was not enough to sustain a household and functions as extra allowance for the family.

Under patriarchal structures of control, socialised characteristics such as patience and deference that are often attributed to women were also viewed to be more productive traits for the manufacturing industry.

According to Vivian Lin, “the concentration of women in electronics is no mere coincidence”, because of certain “feminine traits” that women inherently possess.

“Women have nimble fingers, agile hands, and keen eyesight. They are considered to be more efficient and careful than men. Their dextrous skills are believed to be derived from experience in needlework and other domestic chores; therefore they are considered well suited for labor-intensive jobs that focus on fine detail.”³

Aihwa Ong points out the supposedly symbiotic relationship between electronics manufacturing and female factory workers

“Within international capitalism, this notion of women's bodies renders them analogous to the status of the computer chips they make. Computer chips, like "oriental girls," are identical, whether produced in Malaysia, Taiwan, or Sri Lanka. For multinational corporations, women are units of much cheap labor power repackaged under the "nimble fingers" label.”⁴

Firms also chose female workers over male workers because the docility of female workers makes them more productive workers while also reduces the risk of labour disruptions. Chung Yuen Kay mentions that operators had to deal with two forms of pressure as they performed the required tasks. The insecurity of their position at work and the lack of agency.

“The rules and regimentation, the depersonalisation, fulfilled symbolic and material purposes of ‘managing’ people in accepting the ‘facticity’ of social control within the factory.”⁵

In a similar vein to this notion, Aihwa Ong proposes that the “induced docility of factory women sprang from a practical assessment of their insecure position within the labour market and their powerlessness to change it.”⁶

In addition to gender, MNC firms also showed preference for hiring certain communities over others. In one case, this was due to the reason that Malay girls were considered to be “easier to manage” than choosy, difficult, “trouble-making Chinese girls”⁷, and thus often made more productive workers.

The operators would also leave school around the age of fifteen to join wage work and this according to Chung Yuen Kay would make them more susceptible to regimentation. The continuity of discipline implemented by the school system also benefits the factory. In this way, non-autonomous behaviour functions to serve as a means of productivity.

Other strategies such as fringe benefits were also initiated to help labour-management relations and indirectly improve productivity. These benefits were mostly “feminized” to supposedly hold the interest of the workers. Linda Lim raises the point that, “many fringe benefits are also geared towards “feminine” interests of the vast majority of the workers, for example, cooking classes, dance lessons, make-up and fashion classes, even beauty contests.”⁸

“Industrial indoctrination” and “anxiety reduction” orientation programmes were also meant to shape worker’s attitude while also providing “care”. Certain American companies also have a “counselling and human relations officer” to deal with the issues faced by the workers. Japanese companies often had assemblies before each shift where workers would join together in singing the company song, shout slogans and do mass exercises and calisthenics. Linda Lim also mentions the mechanism of cooperation that is the practice of Singapore unions.

“From the employers’ point of view, it was preferable not to have unions at all. Where unions existed, government controlled unions such as those in Singapore were to be preferred.”⁹

Firms were also able to “win the hearts” of workers who did not believe that the union would be effective in providing adequate support. The supposed “symbiotic relationship” between the state and the trade unions might have been a possible reason to arouse the suspicion of workers. 

“In one particular company, workers rejected forming a union four times because workers are paid higher wages and treated well so morale is high.” It was speculated that “workers recognise government-sponsored unions for what they are and reject them because they have no credibility as workers’ representatives.”¹⁰

Workers were also put into precarious positions due to the employment act. Firms could decide how to manage efficiency through the hiring or firing of workers. Some took advantage of the financial crisis of 1973 to retrench surplus labour. 

“The recession fortuitously provided them with an “excuse” to lay off workers who would have been made redundant anyway by the introduction of automation(capital-labour substitution), new products and processes, and shifting of labour-intensive operations from Singapore to cheaper neighbouring countries.”¹¹

Despite entry into modernity through the industrialised world, workers were still subjected to similar hierarchical systems based on patriarchal systems and assumptions of gender biases. 

“All multinationals accept traditional attitudes towards women when they justify giving women lower wages and expecting greater deference to authority and conscientiousness in work from them. Even the “modern” labour practices and cultural influences introduced by multinationals are often tools for the exploitation of women in the factory, as manipulation of so-called “feminine” habits and proclivities in ways which enable the employers to extract higher output from them at lower wages.”¹²

---

<sub>1. Loh Kah Seng, et al. Theatres of Memory: Industrial Heritage of 20th Century Singapore. Ethos Books, 2022.
2. Lim, Linda. Women Workers in Multinational Corporations. 1978.
3. Lin, Vivian. Health, Women’s Work, and Industrialization. 1986.
4. Ong, Aihwa. “The Production of Possession: Spirits and the Multinational Corporation in Malaysia.” American Ethnologist, vol. 15, no. 1, 1988.
5. Chung, Yuen Kay. Negotiating Target. 1 Jan. 1988.
6. Ong, Aihwa. “The Production of Possession: Spirits and the Multinational Corporation in Malaysia.” American Ethnologist, vol. 15, no. 1, 1988.
7-12. Lim, Linda. Women Workers in Multinational Corporations. 1978.</sub>