It was the sustained expansion of tin mining in the Malay states o f Perak and Selangor in the peninsula led to the very large influx o f Chinese labour immigrants in the 1880s. The early dominance by Chinese in the tin industry ensured that by 1891, there were 95,277 and 50,844 Chinese in the Federated Malay States (F.M.S) o f Perak and Selangor respectively.22 Approximately nine out o f ten Chinese were miners in the F.M.S23 The
20In 1876, there were about 81,000 men and 25,000 women in Hong Kong, and many o f the Cantonese women were believed to be involved m the thriving trade o f prostitution. Gaw, Superior Servant, p. 75.
21 Julian Lim suggests that there were three forms o f prostitution among the Chinese female immigrants in Malaya, namely, sold prostitutes, pawned prostitutes and voluntary prostitutes. See Julian Lim, "Social Problems,” pp. 101-9; and for a social history o f prostitution o f Chinese and Japanese women in colonial Singapore, see James F. Warren, Ah-ku and Karayuki-san: Prostitution in Singapore, 1870- 1940, Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1993.
22Jackson, Immigrant Labour, p. 37.
majority were Cantonese and Hakka immigrants.24 It is unknown when the Chinese women first entered mining employment due to the paucity o f data available on female labour. However, the number o f dulang (pan washing) passes issued by the colonial government clearly indicated an increase in the participation rate o f female workers in the tin mining industry, since the task o f pan washing the tin ore was exclusively undertaken by women. A total o f 8,278 dulang passes were issued in 1909 and the figure increased to 12,867 in 1920.25 The Chinese female labour force in mining included the wives o f miners, especially the old coolies,26 and single women working individually or in groups. Lai concluded that the latter group o f tin workers were Hakka and Sanshui women from which the anti-marriage groups in south China were also recruited.27
It was not surprising that a significant proportion of Hakka females were indeed unmarried women and this was supported by the figures produced in Kaye’s survey of 1,608 Chinese household members who lived in Upper Nankin Street, Singapore, in the late 1950s. The survey revealed that 35 per cent o f the 328 Sanshui female respondents were spinsters, while 39 per cent were widows; and 54 per cent o f 146 Hakka female respondents were spinsters and only 10 per cent were widows.28 However, it may be misleading to suggest that the unmarried Sanshui tin workers were mainly sworn spinsters associated with the Cantonese anti-marriage movement, because there was evidence o f any activities fashioned along the lines o f sisterhood or spinsterhood ties in the tin mining region. Moreover, Sanshui county was never a locality specifically identified with the
24The miners were mainly indentured labourers controlled by different camps o f Chinese secret societies. In Perak, the Cantonese miners belonged to the Ghee Hin secret society while the Hakkas were members o f the Hai San secret society. Gang rivalry and the collusion o f economic interests associated with nval Malay rulers often caused the breakout o f civil wars between these two groups. This resulted in the British intervention m Perak and Selangor in 1874.
2Tbid., p. 146.
26The old coolies or laukheh were usually indentured labourers who had worked in Malaya before returning to China to get mamed. When they came back to Malaya, they often brought along their wives and families.
27Lai, Peasants, Proletarians, and Prostitutes, p. 56.
28Kaye, Upper Nankin Street, pp. 183-84 (see Table 181). Kaye did not disclose the age range used m determining the marital status o f his female respondents. The Sanshui and Hakka women mcluded both the immigrants and local bom women, and 49 per cent o f the female respondents in Kaye’s survey were immigrants while the remainder were local bom women.
Guangdong anti-marriage movement and very few villages were receptive to the marriage resistance customs. It is very likely that these unattached Sanshui female tin workers were in fact women who chose to remain unwed without necessarily being avowed spinsters.
The rubber boom o f 1909 and 1910 together with the abolition o f the indenture system for Indian labour in Malaya led European plantation owners to consider recruiting labour from South China instead. The system o f recruitment for Chinese indentured labour was permitted to continue temporarily in the estates due to keen demand for substitute labourers and the rapid expansion o f plantation rubber in Malaya due to rising rubber prices and increasing international market demand. It was, however, the vacuum created in the supply o f foreign labour, when the government o f India passed a new ruling restricting the migration o f Indians from March 1923 onwards, that resulted in the increase o f Chinese female labour immigrants between 1926 to 1930. Previously, emigration o f Indian subjects to the Straits Settlements had been free o f all restrictions, and the Indian Emigration Act severely undermined the continuous supply o f labour, particularly with the recovery o f the rubber industry in the Federated Malay States. Consequently, more Chinese females were recruited to work on European owned rubber estates which had previously relied mainly on Indian female immigrants for the skilled job o f rubber tapping. M oreover, the employment o f female labour was cheaper than that o f the male labour. Chinese female immigrants thus provided a lucrative alternative to the male immigrants which m aintained wages at a profitable level. Cantonese and Hakka women were extensively employed as female labour on estates.
Although the average price o f rubber fluctuated between the years 1924 to 1929, the migration o f Chinese females rose steadily. Chinese women were mainly employed as casual contract workers on rubber estates or as unpaid labour in family owned rubber smallholdings. In general, the Chinese female participation in the rubber estate labour force increased from 20 per cent in 1930 to about 46 per cent in 1953.29
^Charles Gamba, The Origins o f Trade Unionism in Malaya: A Study o f Colonial Labour Unrest,