The Political Economy of Feminization: From “Cheap Labor” to Gendered Discourses of Work

Abstract

Scholars have argued that the feminization of industrial work in developing countries since World War II is primarily a result of women being the cheapest source of labor in the global economy. I argue that scholarship on feminization underestimates the power of gender in labor markets by framing it primarily as an issue of lower wages. This article shows how gendered discourses of work—ideas and practices about men and women providing distinct forms of labor—play a critical role in the feminization process. While agreeing with feminization theorists that competitiveness in export sectors forces employers to reduce production costs, I show that firms and sectors facing similar competitive constraints deploy varied gender divisions of labor in production. Gendered discourses of work not only illuminate processes of job allocation and reallocation at the firm level but also provide a means of connecting shop-floor gender divisions of labor with broader gendered patterns of industrialization and help to explain puzzling empirical patterns. They are as important as, and in some cases more important than, wages. By tracing the processes through which work is gendered and regendered, the analysis opens the black box of feminization and shows how changes in industrialization policy set in motion gendered transformations that ultimately resulted in the feminization of manufacturing work in Indonesia.I would like to thank the editors of Politics & Gender and the anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions of this article.