Women in the rubber industry (Thailand)

Rubber plantations are rapidly spreading in Southeast Asia, due to the growing demands of the tyre industry, which use 70% of natural rubber.

As a result, large tracts of protected forest are disappearing in many of these countries, where forestry exploitation for raw materials like rubber generates huge profits for the companies involved and also paid employment for local people. Thailand preserves 50% of its forest mass.

Women are rapidly joining the industrial workforce for forest exploitation, such as these women at the Thai Hua Rubber Pcl, who are stacking sheets of rubber which have just come out of the washing machine.