Producing Women: Femininity on the Line By: Jennie Lesmeister

Maquiladora Industry “On the line”-assembly line Mexico’s Northern border First established in the 1960’s Widespread recruitment of young women

Maquiladoras Cont. First-world male breadwinners losing their jobs to girls from the third-world Modeled after export processing plants in East Asia: operate under a feminine ideal Feminized Industry; but not occupied solely by women

Docile and Dextrous Woman Productive femininity Marianismo (once again) Standard in which all potential workers are assessed Docility, no matter who displays it, is produced on the shop floor

Annette Fuentes and Barbara Ehrenreich Early analysts concerned with gender in export processing workforces Argue that high levels of surplus due to access to cheap labor Exploitation of docile and dextrous woman Saw women as being predisposed this way Managers believed in this ready-made workforce too

Gender Fixity Gender varies across social arenas “Envisioning subjectivity as fixed makes such processes invisible, thus making it impossible to see that femininity matters in global production not because it accurately describes a set of traits, but because it functions as a consecutive discourse which creates exploitable subjects.” The self is always in [re]construction Gender is relative

Femininity/Masculinity “Femininity and masculinity are relational categories which operate fundamentally through contrast with each other whether or not that process is made explicit in any particular case. As a result, as one moves through levels of social complexity, what counts as feminine or masculine often shifts, as at each level the attempt to see what goes where necessarily operates on the terrain of old oppositions, creating new contrasts in the process. Thus ‘feminine’ on one level can be ‘masculine’ at the next…

Colliding/Contradicting spheres “Take sewing gloves in a factory: one could imagine a cultural context in which it would be marked as masculine in contrast to work in the home; then within the category of paid work as feminine in contrast to construction work; and still again within the category of garment production as masculine in contrast to sewing lingerie. None of these activities are inherently either feminine or masculine, of course, but the process whereby they become gendered is an inherent aspect of how gender functions.”

Need for Ethnographic Study Author Leslie Salzinger demands a more effective technique for observing export production Enter social world of production Grasp processes of subject creation Hiring and labor control

Frederick Taylor Father of “scientific management” Advocated keeping workers from making any decisions at all Aimed at converting subject to object Schmidt “Taylorism”

Workplace Control Interpellation-the process whereby a subject is created through recognizing her or himself in another’s naming. Works through implicit as well as explicit statements and through meaningful practices as well as through language. One on one supervision; worker as a tool isolation

Conclusion Managers assess what is possible and acceptable in gendered terms, measuring efficiency and productivity with reference to, and sometimes in terms of, the global icon of productive femininity. The docile and dextrous woman is a fantasy brought to life on and for the shop floor This analysis would predict that factories exist in which workers and managers struggle directly over the definition of legitimate femininity or masculinity, as part of a larger struggle over control of the shop floor itself.