#9 DECEMBER 2019 The pursuit of alternatives:“Extractivist” development and feminist workers’ resistance in Thailand Romyen Kosaikanont Despite economic growth and declining poverty levels across Asia, inequality continues to grow, with large groups of society remaining economically and socially marginalized. The “future of work” debate pressures governments to restructure their development models towards innovation, digitalization and automation. Thailand`s economic strategy,“Thailand 4.0”, promises to respond to the multiple challenges of the middle-income trap: imbalanced development and inequality through innovation and digital transformation, but stays true to the old concepts of neoliberal,“extractivist” capitalism and is structurally biased towards investors(Kosaikanont, 2019). Therefore, it fails to transform the economy towards gender and social justice. Local experiences of feminist workers` organizing can show alternatives to the current model. For Zo Randriamaro, a Malagasy feminist academic, “extractivism” is characterized by two key elements: the process of extraction of raw materials and industrial forms of production, which involves seizing resources, and the conditions for the extraction process that are based on an unequal relationships and serial violence (Randriamaro, 2018). As such, this extractivist development model“organizes the political, socio­economic and cultural relations within the respective country or region: the economy and class structures, gender relations, the state and public discourse”(Brand, 2013, cited in Randriamaro, 2018). The common pattern of extractivist capitalism is neo-colonial, the extraction of the resources of the Global South for the benefits of the Global North(Randriamaro, 2018). Thailand`s modern development path is not based on resource extraction in the traditional sense, yet many characteristics described above are extractivist. Exploitative capitalism applies to industrial production 1