Sides of the Same Coin?: Coping and Resistance among Jamaican Data-Entry Operators

Abstract

Since the late 1980s, the Jamaican government has sought to develop industry based on the export of information processing services such as data-entry and telemarketing. Such services make it possible for firms in industrialized countries to import computerized information to be used in their operations from developing countries for a fraction of the cost “at home.” Export of these services from Jamaica has provided employment for many women who might otherwise not have found work. The low wages, harsh working conditions, and lack of occupational mobility that has come to characterize the sector, however, has minimized the potential contribution of this new form of industry to these workers' welfare. Combined with the negative impact that macrolevel policies of structural adjustment have had on low-income households (higher prices and reduced public-service provision), it is easy to conclude that women workers have been the victims of processes imposed from above by policymakers interested only in getting the “macroeconomic” numbers right. This paper argues that to take such a view is to ignore the subversive power embodied in the everyday strategies employed by women to resist demands that threaten to substantially reduce their welfare. In order to uncover how women sustain such subversive workplace tactics that invariably result in lower wages or dismissal, this paper argues that further scrutiny must be paid to the role that the homespace plays in supporting these everyday strategies of resistance.

Keywords::

• Women
• resistance
• industrial restructuring
• data entry
• Jamaica