‘Becoming’ factory workers: understanding women’s geographies of work through life stories in Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract

Feminist scholarship has drawn attention to the multiple places of labour and the intersection of social relations that shape women’s geographies of work. Acknowledging feminist research on gender dynamics of globalization of production and household relations in ‘making available’ women’s labour to the global capital, this article foregrounds explanations offered by the women, through their life stories, of their decisions to enter social relations of waged work. These young women worked in an electronics special economic zone in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where I argue that for women ‘becoming’ workers is not merely about entering into waged work or a scripted notion of class identity, but a complex process through which women’s labour gets incorporated into the relations of (re)production and their ability to negotiate these relations to gain control over their bodies and labour. Their consciousness of ‘becoming’ workers is deeply embedded in their awareness and experiences of the gendered relations of labour at homes and their desire to change their life circumstances. Focusing on work-life experiences beyond employment relations, this article highlights the everyday ‘micro-scale’ struggles of women as they negotiate household relations of labour where escape and responsibility form part of their survival strategies and politics of work.

Keywords:

• Gender
• labour
• labour geography
• life story
• worker agency

Acknowledgements

I am thankful to Negar Elodie Behzadi and Anna Davidson for their support and comments on the initial draft of the paper. I owe particular thanks to Lise Nelson and Becky Mansfield for reading and making helpful suggestions to the drafts. I thank the three anonymous reviewers and Kanchana Ruwanpura for their insightful critiques that helped me strengthen my arguments. My gratitude to Kalpana, Buela, Radha and other young women from the factory who shared their powerful stories with me. Without their stories and insights, this writing wouldn’t have been possible. Any remaining errors are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Madhumita Dutta completed her PhD in Geography in 2016 from the University of Durham, United Kingdom. She did a one year postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Global Workers’ Rights in the School of Labor and Employment Relations, College of the Liberal Arts, The Pennsylvania State University. Currently she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at The Ohio State University, US. Her doctoral thesis is titled ‘Gendering Labour Geography: Mapping women’s world of labour through everyday geographies of work-life at a Special Economic Zone in Tamil Nadu, India’. The thesis explores the social relations and processes that shape women’s geographies of work in the everyday context of life within which work is located. The thesis is available online at: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11679/. Prior to the PhD, Madhumita has been a social activist in India for over sixteen years, working with communities resisting forcible takeover of their livelihoods sources, as well as destruction of their social and cultural habitats. She drew her inspiration as an activist from the struggles for justice and dignity of the survivors of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy in India. As an activist, she travelled widely across India working with communities struggling against the excesses of the state and corporate power.