A gendered labour geography perspective on the Cambodian garment workers’ general strike of 2013/2014

ABSTRACT

This article argues for a gendered labour geography perspective on the Cambodian garment workers’ general strike of 2013/2014 to reveal the contradictory nature of the strike and the general contradictory existence of labour and labour agency in the country. On the local scale, labour is embodied by mostly women workers who used their everyday places and spaces of (re)production for their labour (re)actions, transcending spatial boundaries while building on their structural and collective power from below. Beyond that local scale, labour is primarily represented by formal labour networks and organizations such as trade unions, which are mostly dominated by men and caught up in political power struggles from above. Drawing on qualitative research in Cambodia, the article shows how important it is to follow a women workers’ perspective from below to unveil the emancipatory potential of women workers who fight for much more than just an official minimum wage increase.

KEYWORDS:

• Gendered labour geography
• garment industry
• Cambodia
• labour agency
• gender
• social reproduction

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Jörg Nowak and Andreas Bieler, the editors of this special issue, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and insightful suggestions. I would also like to thank Globalizations editor Shelley Barry. A special thanks goes to Oliver Pye for his very careful reading and detailed feedback on an earlier draft of this paper. Finally, I'm extremely grateful to all the people – especially to the women workers – in Cambodia who were involved in this research. Without their generosity, this writing wouldn't have been possible.

Notes

1 For protection purposes, the names of the women workers have been changed to preserve anonymity.

2 Prime Minister of Cambodia since 1985.

Additional information

Funding

The research was supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (RLS).

Notes on contributors

Michaela Doutch

Michaela Doutch is a PhD student at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Bonn, Germany. Her main research focus is on labour geographies in global productions networks, with a particular interest in gender relations and transnational potentials of labour organization. Since years, she works on the labour movement in the Cambodian garment sector in the frame of her PhD research which is awarded with a scholarship from the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung (RLS).