Globalization of Economy and Changes of Gender Regimes in Asia

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Since the economic crisis in East Asia in 1997, the globalization of the economy has accelerated rapidly, and the casualization of employment and ‘new poverty' which has different characteristics from traditional poverty, have expanded rapidly in regions all over the Asia. As a result, this has deepened the ‘social exclusion' in these regions. The purpose of this research is to clarify and analyze comparatively the actual situation and the structure of ‘social exclusion' in the affected regions being studied, namely, Japan, Korea, Southern China, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Turkey from a gender perspective.In 2004, we concentrated mainly on formulating the common analytic framework to study comprehensively the employment system, the welfare system, and social policies in the regions being studied from a gender perspective.On this basis, field work was conducted in every region of the study in 2005. To be precise, we analyzed comparatively the changes of the structure of the labor market of ‘casualization'', family policies, social assistance policies, the taxation system, the pension system, the structure of living and the industrial relations in the comprehensive analytic framework of 'the livelihood security system' from a gender perspective. In particular, we tried to describe the characteristics of various forms of ‘social exclusion' in every region of the study by investigating the actual levels of ‘informality' in economic activities which are not controlled by the law and the formal system.The results of this research were presented at Women's Worlds 2005 : 9^<th> International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women in Seoul, Korea (June 19 to 24,2005) and the East Asian International People's Symposium held in Yamaguchi, Japan (February 22,2006) to promote gender equality at a regional level and to seek solidarity with Asian people. In Yamaguchi, we would like to share the results and knowledge obtained by this joint research with the regional communities.