Becoming ‘farazat’: Re-examining feminisation from a Tunis used clothes sorting factory

Abstract

In over 40 factories in Tunisia, female sorting workers transform container loads of imported Western used clothing into comparable value categories that are packaged for re-export or sale on the local market. The dominance of women on these factory shopfloors indicates the feminisation of sorting work, typically implying a process of devaluation of labour power. However, this article shows how feminisation has situated outcomes and meanings that are specific to a given labour process. Through an ethnographic account of a Tunis sorting factory, it argues firstly that feminisation cannot be understood separately from the particular production process of used clothes sorting, in which the heterogeneity of used commodities requires female sorters to engage in highly contingent practices of value creation. Situated knowledge is necessary to separate the valuable from the valueless, and to assemble new product categories. Second, the article holds that these hierarches of skill in the factory result in processes of gendered identity construction associated with the vernacular profession ‘farazat’ (pl. sorters). Derived from the activity of sorting, and used exclusively in its feminine form, the identity is collectively asserted to convey a sense of professional pride and authority. Despite the lack of formal recognition, this professional designation is then used to mobilise a language of ‘respect’ that positions the farazat as both ‘workers’ and ‘women’. Far from devaluation, the feminisation of sorting here opens possibilities for women to assert their indispensability to the production process and to challenge the formal bounds of factory work.