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Factory women 工厂女工 Girl power 咱们女工有力量 As the supply of female factory-workers dwindles, blue-collar women gain clout 随着工厂女工的劳动力供给量不断减少，女工的影响力逐渐增强 May 11th 2013 | SHENZHEN |From the print edition SITTING around a restaurant table, six workers discuss the progress of their labor action. Five of them are women, as are most of their several hundred colleagues who have been occupying the toy factory since mid-April. They have been sleeping on floors, braving rats and mosquitoes, to stop the owner shutting down the factory without giving them fair compensation. Those at the table are all migrants from the countryside. A couple are tearful. All are angry and determined not to give way. 在饭店的餐桌前，六名工人正在讨论他们劳工行动的进展。六个人中有五名女性，和他们一样，在几百名四月中旬进入玩具厂工作的工人中，女工占六分之五。为了 阻止老板关掉工厂，获得公正赔偿，他们睡过地板，遭遇过老鼠和蚊子。坐在桌边的都是农民工。一对夫妻哭了出来。他们群情激奋，决心不达目的决不罢休。 In Guangdong province, where nearly 30% of China’s exports are made, women usually far outnumber men on labour-intensive production lines such as those at the toy factory in the city of Shenzhen, next to Hong Kong. Rural women are hired for their supposed docility, nimble fingers and attention to mind-numbing detail. 广东省生产的出口商品占中国出口总量近三成，在劳动力密集的生产线上--例如在毗邻香港的深圳玩具厂里--女工数量通常远远超出男工。工厂聘用农村女性是因为她们比较顺从，手工精巧麻利，又能留心繁琐的细节。 But in recent years Guangdong’s workforce has changed. The supply of cheap unskilled labour, once seemingly limitless, has started to dry up. Factory bosses are now all but begging their female workers to remain. At the same time the women who have migrated to the factory towns have become better-educated and more aware of their rights. In labour-intensive factories, stereotypes of female passivity are beginning to break down. 但近年来，广东省的劳动力结构发生了变化。在以前，廉价的非熟练工人似乎取之不尽，但现在，这种劳动力供给量开始下降。工厂老板现在只能请求女工留下继续 工作。同时，来到工厂附近城镇打工的女性受教育程度提高，更加了解自己的权利。在劳动力密集的工厂里，女工“好欺负”的形象开始瓦解。 Over the past three decades the migration of tens of millions of women from the countryside to factories in Guangdong and other coastal provinces has helped to transform the worldview of an especially downtrodden sector of Chinese society (the suicide rate among rural women is far higher than for rural men). Conditions in the factories have often been harsh—poor safety, illegally long working hours, cramped accommodation, few breaks and little leave—but for many it has also been liberating and empowering, both personally and financially. Leslie Chang, an American journalist, spent three years reporting on women workers in Dongguan, a city near Shenzhen. In her 2008 book “Factory Girls” Ms Chang wrote that, compared with men, the women she encountered were “more motivated to improve themselves and more likely to value migration for its life-changing possibilities.” 在过去三十年里，数千万女性走出农村，到广东省和其它沿海省份的工厂打工，改变了中国社会长期被压迫的妇女阶层的世界观（农村女性的自杀率远高于农村男 性）。工厂通常条件艰苦—治安管理差，非法加班加点，住宿环境拥挤，休息休假时间短—但对很多人来说，这种环境也使他们获得了人身自由，经济独立。美国记 者张彤禾用三年时间报道了深圳附近东莞市的女工。2008年，在她的新书《工厂女工》中，她写道，和男工相比，她遇到的女工“更积极地提高自己，也更愿意 把外出打工看作改变命运的机会”。 They are still not as well-educated as men (about a year less in school on average, with most having only primary- or junior secondary-school education). But the gap has been narrowing. 但女工受教育程度仍然比男工低（平均来说，女工受教育时间比男工少一年，大多数女工只上过小学或者初中）。但男女工人之间的这种差距正在缩小。 Crucially, China’s changing demography has been shifting in their favour. Labour shortages that began to hit low-skilled manufacturing in the second half of the past decade have driven up wages and forced factories to improve working conditions. Once all but unthinkable (for both sexes), strikes have become increasingly common. Anecdotally at least, women appear as likely to take part as men. 重要的是，中国人口结构不断变化，给女工带来了机会。从2005年起，低技能制造业遭遇劳动力短缺，工厂被迫提高工资，改善工作环境。工人抗议活动越来越常见，这在从前是男女工人想都不敢想的。值得一提的是，在抗议活动中，女工似乎不甘示弱。 Strikes in 2010 affecting factories in Guangdong owned by Honda, a Japanese car firm, helped to galvanise labour activism. One of them occurred in the city of Zhongshan, where the workers were mostly female. The unrest there resulted in pay concessions and set a precedent for collective bargaining led by representatives chosen by the workers themselves, rather than government-controlled trade unions. At the Shenzhen toy factory, the workers have chosen five representatives to negotiate with management. Three of them are women. A male worker says the women are more aware of their rights. 2010年的抗议活动使日本本田汽车在广东的工厂受到冲击，增强了劳工行动的势头。有一场抗议活动发生在女工占多数的中山市。这些劳工行动促使工厂提高工 资，也树立了一种先例：即由工人选举代表取代政府管辖的工会领导集体谈判。在深圳的玩具厂，工人选出五名代表和管理部门进行谈判，其中有三名女工。一名男 工说，女工更了解工人权利。 China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based NGO, reported on March 19th that about a fifth of strikes in Guangdong since the beginning of the year had been in factories and other workplaces with largely female staff. It said that women were also “some of the most active workers posting information online about strikes and protests, and in seeking out legal assistance for problems at work.” The protesting toy-workers offer evidence of this. They have posted photographs on microblogs of protesting female workers clad in red jackets opposite lines of police. One of their slogans reads: “Bad boss—give us back our youth”. 总部位于香港的非政府组织—中国劳动力通讯在三月十九日发布报告，称自今年年初，在广东省工厂和其它工作场所爆发的抗议活动中，有五分之一是在女工占多数 的地方发生的。报道称女工“积极通过网络发布罢工抗议活动信息，寻求法律援助，解决和工作相关的问题”。正在抗议的玩具厂工人证明了这一点。他们在微博上 传了穿着红夹克的抗议女工冲击一排警察的照片。他们有条口号叫做“坏老板—还我们青春”。 Wiggle room for NGOs 非政府组织的生存空间 Guangdong is a little more forgiving of protest than many other parts of the country, but still not that tolerant. In July the authorities relaxed controls on the registration of NGOs. But those involved in labour issues rarely get official approval, apparently because of fears that they might help organise strikes. Only a handful of such groups in the province is openly engaged in work to help the female labour force. The leader of one, who asked that she and her organisation not be named, is herself a former migrant worker. She and a few dozen volunteers (mostly women from factories) give advice on collective bargaining. They recently helped some 60 female workers at a jewellery factory secure better severance pay. Negotiations took just a week. She says it would have been “very difficult” to achieve that through government channels. 和其它省份相比，在广东发生的抗议活动更应该得到谅解，但也不能无限宽容。七月份，政府放松了对非政府组织登记的控制。但是和劳动问题相关的组织很少得到 官方批准。很明显，这是担心它们会组织罢工。在广东省，仅有区区几个组织能公开帮助女性劳动者。其中一个组织的负责人（要求个人和组织匿名），自己以前就 是农民工。她和十几个志愿者（大多是工厂女工）为集体谈判提供意见。最近他们帮六十名珠宝厂女工拿到应得的离职津贴。谈判仅持续了一周。她说，如果通过政 府渠道，这件事就会变得“非常难”。 In the coming years Guangdong’s industrial transformation is likely to even out the sex ratio in some cities where it has been skewed towards women. In the township where the NGO works, there are about 30,000 female workers and few men. But the group’s leader says this is changing fast as labour-intensive manufacturing moves out and gives way to an emerging logistics hub. Dongguan, a city once highly unusual in China for having many more women than men, had a male majority by 2010. 在接下来的几年中，广东省的工业转型可能会平衡某些女性过多的城市的性别比。在该组织工作的镇里，大概有三万名女性，而男性寥寥无几。但该组织的负责人 称，随着劳动力密集型制造业迁出，该镇发展成为物流中心，这种现象会发生变化。在中国，东莞市曾是一个极特殊的城市，因为男女比例极不平衡。在2010 年，东莞市的男性开始占多数。 So desperate have some factories become for cheap labour that they are allowing men to work on production lines once exclusively reserved for women. But this does not mean China’s factory women are giving up and going home. The toy workers, many of them in their 30s or 40s, who have been working at the factory since it opened some 20 years ago, are typical of their generation of migrants. They have become urban and their children know nothing else. “We can’t plant fields now”, says one. No, agrees another, “We can’t go back”. 出于对廉价劳动力的需求，一些工厂开始雇佣男工到女工专属的生产线工作。但是这并不意味着女工就此放弃。玩具厂的工人多半三四十岁，从二十年前工厂建成就 一直在这里工作，他们是典型的一代移民。他们已经城市化，他们的孩子对这些一无所知。“我们不能再种地了”，一个工人说道。对，另一个工人附和道“我们不 能回去”。 |
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