Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Juanita Elias On Reproductive Labor
Juanita Elias On Reproductive Labor
very same time that workers are exposed to new sets of gendered power relations within
the factory.
Furthermore, processes of recomposition and intensification are often backed by the
power of the state. This is shown for example in Seungsook Moon’s study of gender rela-
tions in South Korea’s emergence as a modern industrial economy. Moon (2005) observed
the ways the secondary status of women workers was supported by both a militarized state
in the form of repressive anti-labor policies in the feminized export sector and by state
provisions for women’s domestic training. These provisions reflected expectations that
women workers would leave their employment on marriage. Cynthia Enloe’s work (1990)
also highlights the role that states have played (in collaboration with militaries and corpo-
rations) in keeping women’s labor cheap and confined to certain sectors of the economy.
It is, of course, important that discussions of gendered employment relations in the
global economy do not solely focus on the industrial sector. The employment of domestic
workers is an illustrative case study of the gendered nature of work in the global economy
as it demonstrates how the functioning of the global economy is just as dependent on
women employed cleaning homes and caring for children as it is on those working in the
factories, tourist resorts, and agricultural packing plants (even though the latter are more
readily associated with the globalized economy). The migratory flows of domestic workers
and other groups of workers in care-related professions through “global care chains” (a play
on the phrase “global commodity chains”: language frequently used in studies of economic
globalization and transnational production [Hochschild, 2000]) are often overtly encour-
aged by governments who see female migrants as an important economic resource. In
this way, women play a significant role in a country’s economic development since they
tend to return at least half of their earnings to families in their countries of origin. In the
Phillippines, for example, a country that has actively pursued outward labor migration as
both an economic development strategy and a solution to chronic unemployment, remit-
tances from migrant workers constitute the country’s largest source of foreign currency.
However, as women struggle to send money home to families, they may find themselves
locked in low-paid employment with difficult working conditions. The consequences of
migratory domestic employment of care-workers also affect families and communities left
behind as well as women workers themselves. In the Philippines where care workers (be
they domestic workers, nurses, preschool teachers, or care assistants) are now one of the
country’s major exports, it is suggested that the country is experiencing its own “crisis of
care.” This is linked to the loss of women’s unpaid caring labor as well as the mass depar-
ture of female workers who could have been employed in these capacities in their country
of origin (Parrefias, 2002).
The migration of domestic workers also provides an example of the intersections
between gender and race in the global political economy. Although these workers are often
highly skilled and qualified as teachers or nurses, race and nationality (plus in some cases,
unofficial employment status) mark “Third World” women as low-skilled and uneducated
and thus deserving of significantly lower wages than “local” workers (Kofman, 2004).
REPRODUCTIVE LABOR
In order to understand the gendered nature of women’s employment, it is necessary to
address the reproductive labor usually performed within the private sphere of the family,
Reproductive Labor | JUAWITA ELIAS 413
RERRI
Used with permission of Ann Telnaes and Women’s eNews in conjuction with the
Cartoonist Group. All rights reserved
to the home and prevent her from interacting with outsiders. These practices contribute
to a curtailment of access that prevents them from learning of their contractual rights
(e.g., stipulations regarding rates of pay) and makes them especially vulnerable to abusive
labor practices and other forms of violence.
A second related point'is that gendered ideas about an essentialized women’s “nature”
encourages their hiring into certain kinds of “womanly” employment. Indeed, most studies
of women’s employment in the global manufacturing sector have noticed the widely held
beliefs among managers that women are an important source of docile, diligent, and dex-
terous “nimble fingered” workers. They recruit them into assembly line work because they
believe the repetitive and mundane (and often debilitating) aspect of the work suits their
nature. Such discourses of “productive femininity” are a key mechanism for maintain-
ing control and discipline over feminized groups of workers (Elias, 2005). Thus we see
in Pun’s study of Chinese export sector employment that managers enforced workplace
discipline by explicitly identifying female bodies as “docile” labor (Pun, 2005, pp. 143-5).
Managers often had very clear ideas about what constituted “feminine” employment and
saw the importance of certain gendered characteristics in securing a productive and reliable
workforce. In these ways, workplace control is not only enforced through these discur-
sive mechanisms (words and language), but also through relatively high levels of control
and surveillance. This surveillance (that may mimic the control of women by males in the
home) is often part of the everyday experience of women workers on assembly lines who
find their performance subject to constant observation by supervisors as they strive to meet
production targets (Salzinger, 2003).
Third, employers often regard women’s employment as “secondary” work. Factory
work is frequently viewed as a short-term strategy that young women undertake prior to
mattiage (at which point it is assumed that they move into the realm of social reproduction
as wives and mothers). In her work on female factory employees in Shenzen, China, Lee
(1998, p. 128) notes the persistence of ideas held among managers concerning young female
factory workers as “girls who worked while waiting to be married off” and thus not deserv-
ing of training, promotion or better rates of pay. By contrast, “men’s plans for marriage and
family meant that they would be dedicated to climb the company ladder because of their
imminent family burdens.” The reality, however, is that most women continue to com-
bine paid work (in both the formal and informal sector) with unpaid household work.
This notion of women’s paid labor as secondary to their family work encourages the myth
of female disposability whereby employers can avoid investing in training and developing
female workers, paying higher wages to more senior employees, or providing health and
safety practices since they assume women will leave the workplace upon marriage.
RESISTANCES, CHALLENGES,
AND TRANSEORMATIONS
Having outlined the ways women workers are subject to harsh and often abusive workplace
practices, social stigmatization and systems of intense workplace control, I now turn to
consider the possibilities for resistance and change. Cultural meanings associated with
gender and the ensuing identities performed by individuals “do more than merely sustain
existing structures of power in global labor relations; these complex dimensions of gender
also constitute a dynamic cultural terrain wherein forms of domination may be contested,
reworked, and even potentially transformed” (Mills, 2003, p. 42).
Women’s resistance to unfair or particularly harsh labor practices is threefold. First,
resistance occurs at the local level when individual workers employ everyday resistance
strategies (sometimes called “weapons of the weak” [Scott, 1985]). This might be as sim-
ple as challenging an employer’s authority and/or drawing attention to similar class, cul-
tural, and educational backgrounds that domestic workers frequently share with their
employers.
In Aihwa Ong’s study of Malaysian factory workers, we are introduced to another
individual-level form of resistance strategy—so-called “spirit possession”: incidents or acts
of mass hysteria within the workplace. For Ong, such acts of resistance reflected how young
rural women struggled to adapt to the rigors of capitalist control and discipline on the
factory floor. However, Ong notes that “the enactment of ‘ritualized rebellion’... did not
directly confront the real cause of their distress” (1987, p. 210). Instead these acts of resis-
tance act more like a “safety value.” Although such behaviors grant workers a few hours
away from the workplace during which time the workplace is ritually “cleansed,” they
enable employers to view female workers as essentially irrational and therefore unsuited to
higher status or paid employment (see also Elias, 2005).
Workers might also engage in mundane everyday acts of resistance such as absenteeism
or taking additional breaks during shifts. Sally Theobold (2002), for example, discusses the
multiple forms of resistance among female Thai workers employed in electronics manu-
facturing. Some of these are culturally specific, localized forms of resistance and include
things like making jokes at a manager’s expense in a language or dialect that he or she cannot
understand, or wearing consciously unfeminine clothing outside of the factory setting as a
way of challenging the hyperfeminization of assembly line work (i.e., the association between
a feminine identity and feminized forms of employment) found on the factory floor.
416 CHAPTER9 | Women’s Work in the Global Economy
Second, the agency and resistance strategies of women workers are also often seen in
more organized forms in, for example, women’s cooperatives and organizations that pro-
vide economic and social support to women-owned enterprises. This is portrayed in the
reading “Banking on Women”: two essays by Sean Kelly and Somini Sengupta that discuss
women’s economic empowerment through microloans and women-owned banks in regions
of Ghana and India. Microcredit has frequently helped women to take control of their
economic futures by providing opportunities forthem to start and succeed in enterprises
in both the formal (a company, selling, for example, handcrafted goods overseas through
fair trading practices) and informal (a road stand or booth selling food to local people)
sectors. Third, alongside such practices, organized resistance also includes efforts to provide
protective labor legislation and laws and policies to promote gender equity in employment.
This may occur through nongovernmental activist organizations and lobbying efforts, as
well as through the efforts of unions discussed in more detail below. Such strategies are
illustrated in the reading “The 40-Percent Rule” by Martha Burk that discusses policies in
Norway to require publicly funded firms to include a certain percentage of women on their
corporate boards. As of this writing, France is also considering this policy.
Access to trade union activism is severely limited for some women workers. Migrant
domestic workers, for example, are often prevented by government policies from joining
trade unions. Even in states with more progressive labor relations policies, they may not be
able to join unions when domestic work is categorized as short-term temporary employ-
ment. Within export sector industries there has also been limited unionization among
female workers, in part because countries keen to attract much-needed foreign direct invest-
ment have sought to limit labor rights. However, another problem lies within the gendered
politics of male-dominated trade union movements themselves. Male trade unionists may
not take the specific concerns of women workers {such as child care provision or workplace
sexual harassment) seriously or may have vested interests in ensuring that certain higher
paying jobs remain male dominated. Furthermore, in some countries, unions are closely
tied into state patronage networks thereby limiting the extent to which unions will act as
4
effective champions of women workers’ rights (for example, Chinese unions are part of the
'.
|t apparatus of the state and should not be understood as an independent force representing
the interests of workers [Cooke, 2008]).
Women’s labor organizing therefore has frequently not been undertaken through the
auspices of large trade union movements; rather it has tendedto take a more “grassroots”
(bottom-up) form. A good example of this is Bickham Mendez’s (2005) account of the
Nicaraguan Working and Unemployed Women’s Movement, Marfa Elena Cuandra (MEC),
a grassroots advocacy organization seeking to organize women in the country’s free trade
zones. The MEC was founded by women activists who were disillusioned by the failure of the
official trade union movement to elect any female representatives: Brown and Chaytaweep
(2008) note how similar events occurred in Thailand whereby frustrations with the male
dominance and ineffectiveness of official trade union movements meant that female activ-
ists were at the forefront of labor activism taking place outside the official movement. This
has led to the emergence of important coalitions of activism around the rights of women
workers that involve labor-focused nongovernmental organizations, civil liberty groups,
academics, and certain trade unions that take a more progressive approach to issues of
gender equality (such as the Thai Federation of Textiles, Clothing and Leather Workers).
Organizing groups of workers such as migrant domestic workers, homeworkers, and
sex workers is challenging because they may be confined to households in which they work
418 CHAPTER 9 | Women’s Work in the Global Economy
Rigoberta continues to work for the rights of indigenous people and women in Guatemala and around
the world. In 2007, she joined with five other women Nobel laureates in sending a letter to the Burmese
junta, which keeps Aung San Suu Kyi in detention, calling them to restore democracy in Burma.
For more information, read |, Rigoberta Menchd: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. Brooklyn, NY: Verso
Books, 1984.
or they are undocumented migrants who would be unwilling (as well as unable) to become
involved in union activities: a situation that is compounded for many groups of sex workers
who are involved in illicit forms of employment. Trade unions are increasingly coming
to recognize the need to become involved in organizing these groups of workers due to
the highly exploitative nature of these forms of employment. In Malaysia for example, the
national trade union movement has been involved in (ultimately unsuccessful) attempts
to organize migrant domestic workers (Elias, 2008). Involvement in these nontraditional
areas of union activity can also lead to nontraditional forms of trade unionism. For exam-
ple, the U.K.-based General Workers union (the GMB) established an adult entertainment
branch in order to organize workers in the sex industry. This reflects a new form of union
emerging that is not based on high membership numbers, but on the needs of workers in
individual workplaces. Rather, activist unions or collective self-organized groups emerge
that sit somewhere in between activist pressure group/NGO and trade union (Gall, 2006).
This is a very useful way of thinking about trade unions—especially in relation to some of
the most unorganized and often deeply feminized sectors of the service economy. In other
words, the (masculinist) norm of the formal sector perrianent full-time worker as trade
unionist cannot be applied to these sectors.
Finally, alongside individual strategies and efforts at local and global levels to orga-
nize women, are transnational efforts that challenge global gender inequalities, especially
those related to the economic practices of neoliberalism with its emphasis on free markets,
privatization, and trade and financial liberalization, international division of labor, and
cheap, feminized labor forces. As discussed in chapter 1, beginning in the 1980s, transna-
tional feminist networks such as Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era
(DAWN) and Women in Development Europe (WIDE) organized against “free trade”
with its privatization of public goods and commercialization of services that threatened
the economic security of workers, arguing that women would disproportionately bear the
burden of the employment losses and dislocations caused by international trade agree-
ments. These transnational bodies analyzed the activities of multinational corporations
and global financial organizations like the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and
the International Monetary Fund, lobbying for transparency and accountability and join-
ing coalitions with environmental, labor, religious, and human rights groups to advocate
for social justice.
Strategies have included campaigns (such as the one directed against Nike) addressing
corporate codes of conduct that have forced companies to adopt a commitment to improv-
ing labor standards in their supply chains. Codes of conduct are statements of minimum
standards, usually pertaining to labor, environmental, and human rights’ issues. Although
these campaigns may be progressive, few codes of conduct actually mention specific prob-
lems and issues that women workers face on a day-to-day basis. These problems include
nesirunces, Lhanenges, and lransformations | JUANITA ELIAS
419
low wages and wage inequality; a lack
of protection and respect for pregnant
inadequate occupational health, safety, and workers;
social security rights (especially for part-tim
workers); absence of freedom of association e
or the right to collective bargaining; and
enforced overtime, over-long working days,
and the intensity of work (Pearson & Seyfa
2002). In addition, women workers are ng,
often unaware that such codes of cond
exist. The high levels of subcontracting in uct even
industries such as garment production com-
pound these problems and make it exceptio
nally difficult to trace when and where work
are covered by particular codes (Hensman, ers
2005). Nevertheless, codes of conduct are
Presented as offering an opportunity for wome often
n’s activism and Positive change on a pract
cal level. It is widely. conceded that codes may i-
eventually come to play an important role
the setting of labor standards that will benef in
it women workers, Ultimately it is importan
that codes are developed in cooperation with t
women workers themselves and that impacts
of labor practices on female workers are a
central priority (Prieto & Bendel, 2002).
In closing, it is important to emphasize that
global forces constructing women as a
pool of cheap- and exploitable labor incorpor
ate ideas of “productive” and “flexible” femi-
ninity that underpin global business pract
ices. In the case of migrant domestic work
for example, we see how discourses ers,
around the need to control workers, and
of work as unpr definitions
oductive, expose them to exploitative labor
racialized nature of the organization of practices and underlines the
care work in today’s global economy. Simu
ously it is important to recognize these work ltane-
ers as having agency and avoid treating them
“victims” of global capital. Work can offer as
women Opportunities and may break down
ditional gender relations within families and tra-
households, serving as ways to avoid poverty
and potentially bring a level of autonomy
and independence not previously available.
most important challenge, however, is to Our
provide a strong critique of the broader
tures of economic governance facilitating gend struc-
ered systems of exploitation and to advocate
Strategies addressing these inequalities for
the economic, social, and human rights of
women. all
REFERENCES