Abstrakt: |
Theories of gender emphasize the importance of context for converting existing cultural beliefs into intended gendered action. Numerous studies have evaluated differences in gendered practice across public and private spheres. The case study contributes to established scholarship by evaluating gendered labor organizing strategies within the export garment industry of Bangalore, India. The paper addresses the following research question: Can schemas of gender difference be used in ways that challenge gender inequality? The inquiry sheds light upon the enactment of gender within the public sphere of industrial manufacturing. The data shows contrary gendered behavior inside garment factories as oppose to immediately outside factory walls. While presumptions of women's weakness result in female subservience inside factories, directly outside factory gates, female labor organizers exploit the same assumptions to challenge managerial authority. The double function of female frailty is evaluated to argue the importance of space in the performance of gender. The analysis delineates a fragmentation of the industrial sphere into public and private spaces. Referencing of these spaces as public or private situates the translation of gendered assumptions into practice. My work shifts attention from the public and private spheres to the referencing of public-private spaces within the same sphere. The paper argues that public space serves two functions, first as situating the social construction of gender, and second in reformulating relations that stem from the production of gender. The relationship between space and the contrary enactment of gender offers in-roads for the "undoing" of gender inequality as a social phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |