Malaysian Women Service Users and the Economics of the Psychiatric Asylum System

Findings from an ethnographic study of women psychiatric service users in Sarawak, Malaysia, indicate that they are subject to a host of oppressive strategies that operate in terms of physical control of women’s mobility and activities. These directly impact on the exploitation of women’s labour in the hospital setting. Labour is considered in relation to rehabilitative activities such as occupational therapy, unpaid ward chores and the exclusion of women service users from informal profiteering activities amongst the patient population in general. These forms of exploitation are placed in a global as well as an historical context of the subjugation of women in the psychiatric and capitalist system.