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Abstract

This thesis is a study to understand the practices of everyday life of women traders; their trading tactics and their informal social networking to accumulate capital to raise their position to become large entrepreneurs. Moreover, this study pays attention to the status of women in the domestic space by trying to understand negotiation and management of domestic relations of women traders. This study wants to examine if women have gained better status, and how they negotiated power relations in the domestics space. The study has found that though there are a lot of small-scale women traders; only a few can raise their status into large entrepreneurs. Chiang Mai University (1) This study found that women faced a problem of access to production resources and capital; including revolving funds which are necessary for the success and the sustenance of the trade. Women traders tried to solve problems of the lack of revolving funds by daily engagement in rotating saving and credit association (ROSCA) lending on the side of small-scale trades from large entrepreneurs. The lending was made possible through social networking. (2) This study found that, apart from face-to-face networking, large entrepreneurs learned of the experience of modern trading, through working outside of their hometown to learn about new technology, business expansion, through expansion of production lines. (3) As for the status of women in the domestic space, this study found that when working as traders outside of homes, women encountered changes in gender relation; both in the kind of conflicts and cooperation. Many women still had the ideologies of motherhood and wife behind them which made them accept the burden of domestic chores as well as outside trading. This study; however, found that different economic status produces different bargaining power in the domestic sphere, that is, women with better economic status had more bargaining power.