The social and economic changes in Thailand in the past decades have important implications for the quality and quantity of labor. The economic and non-economic roles of women in Thailand can be traced back several hundred years in Thai history,Phananiramai 1995 when there were traditional discriminatory attitudes towards women in the culture of Thailand.CEDAW 2012 The transformation of Thailand's social and economic structure since the 1960s led to the gender disparities in Thai society.Son 2011 Recently, the position of Thai women in the labor market has improved a lot in comparison to the past as a result of modernization.Nakavachara 2010 In 2011, Thailand ranked 69th out of 143 countries in the Gender Inequality Index.UNDP 2011 In labor economics, gender inequality is widely discussed in terms of concepts of sex segregation and employment discrimination.Siltanen et al. 1995 Thai government and non-governmental organizations have put forth many policies and programs to address gender inequalities in the last few decades.
Gender Inequality Index of Thailand Thailand was 69th in global rank of the UNDP's Gender Inequality Index (GII) in 2011 out of 146 countries, with the GII value of 0.382 (where the GII values range from 0 to 1, with 1 representing perfect inequality). The GII has three components that reflect three dimensions of gender inequality: reproductive health, empowerment, and economic activity.
Reproductive health Reproductive health is measured by maternal mortality rate and adolescent fertility rate. In 2011, the mortality ratio in Thailand was 48, which implies that for every 100,000 live births, 48 women die from pregnancy-related causes. The adolescent fertility rate was 43.3 birth per 1,000 live births to women ages 15–19 in the same year.
Empowerment The share of parliament seats held by women and men and the attainment of secondary and higher education by each gender have been used as measures of empowerment of women, according to the GII. As of 2011, women held 14% of parliament seats, which represents an improvement over the 9.2% held in 2001.National Statistical Office 2011a In 2011, Yingluck Shinawatra was selected as the first female Prime Minister of Thailand.Keawmala 2011
In regards to education level, Thai women aged 25 and older who attained at least secondary school educations accounted for 25.6% of the Thai population, compared to 33.7% for men.
Thailand has always offered military roles to Thai women, some 54.55% of women represent the National Human Right Commission and 10% of the National Reconciliation Commission. Thai women have been empowered to serve in the military, assigned roles as negotiators, mediators, and facilitators, as well as involvement in security operations. However, they still remain excluded from playing active roles in armed conflict.https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing15/responses/escap/Thailand.pdf “Part 1: Overview of achievements and challenges in promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment” Accessed May 31, 2021.
Economic activity Economic activity in the GII is measured by labor force participation rate, which is the proportion of the country's working-age population that engages in the labor market. In 2011, the labor force participation rate of Thai women was 65.5% compare to 80.7% of their male counterparts.
Women labor force participation in Thailand
Historically, women in Thailand have been active in a variety of economic activities. During the era of Ayutthaya Kingdom (1350-1767), under the sakdina system, every freeman had to be registered as a servant with the local lords, under whom the prime-age men were forced to be away from home to work for the crown or to serve military services.Onozawa 2002 Women were left behind to take care of their families and farms and it became traditional for women to take responsibility for housework and economic activities while men are in charge of economic and political activities. Women and men, together, have continued to have high economic participation since then, which is reflected in the high female labor force participation rate of Thailand, which is one of the highest in the world in the last decade. In 2010, the female labor force participation rate of Thai women over the age of 15 years was reported to be at approximately 64% and in 1990 was reported to be as high as 76% .World Bank 2012 In 2011, women's labor force participation rate of Thailand was 65.5% while men's labor force participation rate was 80.7%.
Increase in women's labor force participation rate does not mean that women and men are treated equally in the labor market. Increase in participation could be the result of the movement of women unpaid women's work to the paid-productive types. However, if the same contributions of women and men are paid differently, gender inequality still exists.Elson 1999 In 2004, the average welfare, measure by individual earnings, of Thai men was estimated to have 8.29% higher than that of women. As Thailand underwent the structural social and economic changes into the modern society in which economic activities are in great conflict with household tasks that remain as the main responsibility of women, Thai women faced new challenges and were opened up to new opportunities to participate in the social and economic development of the country. Overall, Thai women are in a more disadvantaged economic position than men in the labor market as demonstrated by their concentration in low-paid, low-skilled occupations, opposite to those of men.Tonguthai et al. 1998
Gender norms in Thai society are one of the main sources of discrimination against women in the labor market. There is an idiom in Thai says that “สามีเป็นช้างเท้าหน้า ภรรยาเป็นช้างเท้าหลัง” which translates as “The husband is the fore leg of the elephant. The wife is the hind leg”, implying that men are the leaders and women are the followers in Thai society.Jermsittiparsert 2008 Traditionally, daughters are prepared to be mothers and followers while sons are prepared to be leaders and in the workplaces women are given second priority for education, on-the-job training and promotion.
Employment segregation by gender in Thailand
Thailand's economic transformation from an agricultural to an industrial economy in the 1960s reduced the demand for labor on farms and, in the meantime, increased the demand for unskilled labor in the factories.Tonguthai 1998 As a result, unskilled female laborers migrate from poor rural areas to the urban areas to work for minimum wages or less, as can be seen in female workers tendency to concentrate in low-paid, low-skilled occupations.
In 2011, the majority of Thai women labor force concentrated in agricultural, wholesale and retail trade, and manufacturing sectors, which employed approximately 39.17%, 16.22% and 14.63% of the total female labor force, respectively,National Statistical Office 2011b in comparison to 69.6%, 8.1% and 2.3%, respectively in 1980. These figures demonstrate the large-scale reallocation of women workers from the agricultural sector to the retail trade and manufacturing sectors.
In 2011, women accounted for 46.21% of the total employment rate. Most of this employment was in informal activities. Out of the total female labor force, 62.49% were occupied in the informal sector, which was nearly identical to the proportion of male workers who were employed in the informal sector.
The types of job occupied by each sex are also different. The industries/occupations that Thai men dominated include: Agricultural (55.8%) Mining and quarrying (83.6%) Public administration and defense (64.0%) Water supply (69.7%) Construction (84.6%) Transportation storage (86.9%) Information and communication (64.8%) Professional, Scientific and technical (52.4%) Administrative and support services (57.7%) Electricity, gas, stream supply industry (81.17%).
The numbers in the parentheses show the number of men workers as a percentage of the total employment in each industry (occupation) as of 2011.
Women were, in contrast, occupied in the industries/occupations such as: Accommodation and food service (64.2%) Financial and insurance activities (55.5%) Real estate activities (55.7%) Education (61.1%) Human health and social work (75.9%) Activities of household employers (82.1%) Activities in international organizations (100.0%) Other service activity industry (55.3%).
The numbers in the parentheses show the number of women workers as a percentage of the total employment in each industry (occupation) as of 2011.
In summary, in 2011 male workers were heavily employed in the transportation, mining, and building trades while female workers were largely employed in clerical and service occupations.
Occupational segregation by sex is widely associated with gender wage disparity.Blau et al. 2010 As elsewhere, men's jobs in Thailand are mostly blue-collar jobs, which require specific skills with higher pay, while women's jobs are mostly white-collar jobs. After controlling for the effects of the differences in education, work experience and location, that may reflect the income disparity between men and women, the study of Son (2011) indicates that wage pays largely contribute to the income disparity between men and women.
As of 2011, almost a third of women in the labor force were unpaid family workers, in contrast to 16% of men. Out of the total female labor force, 50.78% are engaged in the informal sector. Many of these workers work part-time or are temporarily employed in family businesses. In 2000, 7.5% of employed female workers were reported to work as part-time workers. As of the first quarter of 2012, 43.93% of Thai women, beside those who were too young or too old, were out of the labor force because of household duties and 22.21% were students.National Statistical Office 2012
Preference of workers and cultural factors that lead to job segregation are the causes of gendered wage disparity as well. The labor markets are embedded with societal gender norms that shape the preferences of employers and workers on choices of jobs that are appropriate to each sex.
Gender wage disparity in Thailand
The gender wage differentials in Thailand declined in the early 1990s. The trend reversed after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. The main source of the existing differentials is discrimination.Adireksombat et al. 2010 As of 2007, among non-agricultural sector workers in Thailand, women received 92% of the average wage of men compared to 65.4% in 1990. Women's wages in the manufacturing sector as of 2008 were 80% of men's and were 72% in 2000.ILO 2012
As Darity and Mason (1998) point out, the potential sources of the narrowing of the gender wage gap are a comparative decline in men's wages to women's wages; an increase in the human capital of women; and the legal pressure against discrimination. The difference in work experience is also an important cause of gender pay gap.Kim and Polachek 1994 In Thailand, the gender wage differential is larger when experience premiums are accounted for. Men with work experience receive significantly higher wages than women with the same work experience. This implies gender wage discrimination.
There seems to have no gender wage gap by the convergence of the trends of raw averages of female and male hourly wages. However, after controlling for socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, women continue to earn less than men by 16 percent in 2013. Jithitikulchai 2016 Jithitikulchai 2018
Education attainment of Thai women
Education is one of the major contributors that affect the labor market gender disparity in Thailand. The narrowing of the gender gap in Thailand from 1985-2005 was mainly the result of a narrowing of the gender education gap due to a substantial increase in Thai women's education.