Abstract
Drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews with women garment workers in a low-income neighbourhood of Istanbul, and observations in the ateliers where they worked, this article examines their work experiences in the gendered and sexualised work atmosphere of garment workshops. There are three interrelated levels upon which the gender-related issues emerge in women garment workers’ stories. The first set of discourses portrays young female garment workers in highly sexualised terms, and the second concerns the use of kinship vocabulary and avoidance of impersonal work relationships. That is, women workers’ experiences in capitalist production sites were trivialised and regulated through the sexualisation of their bodies and the deployment of kinship idioms while addressing their role at the workplace. The third level analyses women’s submissive, subversive or contradictory responses to these gendered disciplinary techniques and representations, i.e. the construction of their subjectivities. These three levels point to two things: first, cultural presumptions about marriage, women’s sexuality and reproductive cycles are materialised at the workplace. Second, gendered instantiations of these presumptions in a specific work environment are both informed by their familial roles (such as daughter, wife, mother, widowed) and inform their future reproductive preferences (whether they marry, have a child, get a divorce, etc.). This article shows how the ways in which women’s difference is construed and acted upon in the garment industry are inseparable from women’s reproductive decisions.
Highlights
Feminisation of the labour force,[1,2,3,4,5] i.e. women’s increased participation in labour markets, is a multi-layered process that reflects profound structural transformations at the global level in the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services
The third level analyses women’s submissive, subversive or contradictory responses to these gendered disciplinary techniques and representations, i.e. the construction of their subjectivities. These three levels point to two things: first, cultural presumptions about marriage, women’s sexuality and reproductive cycles are materialised at the workplace
Focusing on the experiences of younger women from low-income, migrant families, who usually engage in lower paying tasks and are informally employed in garment workshops, this paper explores how local gendered discourses and practices about women workers are promoted to maintain a flexible and docile workforce in exportoriented garment production in Turkey
Summary
Feminisation of the labour force,[1,2,3,4,5] i.e. women’s increased participation in labour markets, is a multi-layered process that reflects profound structural transformations at the global level in the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. One important layer is the globalisation of production, which gives rise to new industrial zones in low- and middle-income countries under the pressure of increased competition.[6] These manufacturing zones often rely on women’s low-cost labour. Turkey’s export-led industrialisation beginning in the 1980s did not lead to feminisation of the labour force.[7] After three decades of structural adjustment, the urban women’s labour force participation is only at 22%, much lower than other low- and middleincome countries outside Middle East and North Africa (MENA).[8] This picture changes somewhat in the textile and garment sectors in which women’s labour force participation is at 37%, and 40%
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