The underbelly of the tiger: gender and the demystification of the Asian miracle.

This article analyses the Asian miracle both as an ideological construct and as an empirical experience. As an ideological construct, the Asian miracle can best be understood in the context of the western construction of Otherness. Such a construction is an expression of a complex web of power relations forged mainly by a struggle between east and west over industrial achievement, the meaning of industrial progress and governance. As an empirical experience, industrialization in East Asia may be appre22 hended through gender as a key organizing principle manifested in a four-tier system of industrial work. Industrial strategies in East Asia have been deployed in conjunction with reproductive strategies which correspond to the specificities of capital formation and degree of capital25 technology intensity. The emerging social patterns since the crisis began in 1997 indicate that gradual changes which have taken place in the political economy of women's labour in East Asia have not necessarily altered a gender order governed by cultural conservatism which privileges males over females. A female gaze on the relation between economy and polity may contribute to the redesign of development policy along norms and values that can promote more gender-balanced and humane societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]