Women migrant workers such as Thansoongnern and Chaisaeng are stuck between a hard life in the city they now call home and few job opportunities in rural areas where they come from.
Many are the main breadwinners in their families, single daughters or divorced mothers and wives with unemployed husbands.
The same is true of the millions of female overseas migrant workers in the region. Families are being badly hit by falling remittances in countries such as Indonesia, where 80 percent of overseas migrant workers are women, and the Philippines, where remittances account for 12 percent of GDP.
Governments in Asia need to take this in consideration when proposing economic stimulus packages, said the UN Fund for Women (UNIFEM).
In its analysis of stimulus packages in 10 countries, the agency said most fiscal spending was directed toward male-dominated sectors and measures do not target informal sectors where the vast majority of workers are female.
Experts said whatever the shape of the recovery, the labor market would take longer to recover and there were concerns that as female workers lose their jobs, any gains in gender equality would be lost.
“Women made some progress in terms of gender equality in the last decade or so,” Sziraczki said.
Women entering the labor force have changed the “status of the women within the family, within the society,” he said.
“If this trend of unemployment is long term, if women cannot go back to their jobs soon, this process can come to a halt and reverse to a certain extent,” Sziraczki said.
For Chaisaeng, her immediate concern is her next pay check.
“I thought our jobs were secure,” she said. “Now I don’t know what to do.”
RSS