Juki girls

In Sri Lanka ‘Juki girls’ was the name given to the young women who migrated to the export processing zones to stitch clothes for a living. Referring to the Juki brand of sewing machine, the name also carried with it connotations of immorality. By migrating from their rural homes to urban environments because of poverty and then engaging in modern forms of waged work, these women appeared to defy the ‘respectable’ gendered behaviours expected of them. More than just a nickname, the stigmatised identity of the Juki girl became a means of domination and a site of struggle.

This experience is not unusual. Across the Global South the mass entry of women into export-oriented factory employment in the latter half of the 20th century necessitated their increased mobility and visibility. Many proponents of this shift saw it as empowering women; not only would women earn more money but they would also escape the confines of tradition and of domestic and agrarian work. The World Bank advances this line of argument in its 2016 report Stiches to Riches? Corporate campaigns have also adopted the rhetoric of economic empowerment to reorient public perceptions about the women working in global supply-chains. Contesting this account, initial feminist research by Diane Elson and Ruth Pearson identified the recomposition of gender subordination in which certain forms of patriarchy were broken down but others emerged to take their place. Liberating young women from the authority of their patriarchal households only to subject them to the authority of male bosses was a commonplace way in which this happened.   

Docile feminine labour

The stereotype of docile feminised labour has been advantageous to capital because of the flexibilities it offers. This includes the ability to work longer hours to meet demanding orders from international buyers, as well as the absence of ‘rigidities’ like collective bargaining requirements (women in export processing zones are not typically unionised). But such labour does not exist naturally; capitalists and state elites have had to actively produce it. One way this was achieved was through spatial strategies. For example, in places like Thailand, clothing factories are located near border-towns, and rely on migrant workers from distant regions precisely because they lack the legal rights, social support networks and cultural know-how to protect their interests. Recent suggestions to transform refugee camps into ‘industrial incubators’ shows the ongoing use of such zoning technologies.

Another way of making docile labour has been through the gendered practices and rhetorics of shop-floor life. In Sri Lanka this has taken the form of paternalism, where management acts in loco parentis (i.e. in the place of a parent). This has involved managers liaising with their employees’ family members, targeting parents directly in recruitment drives, providing hostels with tight security arrangements, and replicating paternal relations on the shop floor between managers and workers. The replication of familialism and the subjugation and exploitation it implied for women has been noted across industrialising Asia, revealing the gendered relations underlying the rapid GDP growth.

On the other hand, there is the more subtle form of harm in which people are slowly exhausted. This has been conceptualised in feminist political economy by Shirin Rai et al. as depletion. Here, the physical and emotional energy required to undertake social reproduction – managing the household, caring for others, raising children and so on – is not sufficiently replenished, leading to ill-health. However, my research in a Sri Lankan clothing factory showed that depletion also exists in the sphere of production.

Both men and women in different job categories reported that the one thing they disliked the most about their jobs was overtime. The effects could be seen on their physical and mental health, particularly when compelled to work seven-day weeks with overtime hours every day, or excessive night shifts. I watched as workers who began work at the same time as my factory observations commenced started to lose weight and develop health problems including urinary tract infections (from being unable to take breaks to urinate regulatory) and gastritis and stomach ulcers (from stress/irregular eating patterns). Despite the familial loyalty engendered in the Sri Lankan clothing workforce, employees only last so long before they are ‘finished’, typically just five to six years. Such experiences of routinized illness and burn-out tend not be addressed in the corporate codes of conduct and industry initiatives purporting to produce ‘garments without guilt’, which focus instead on reducing immediate health and safety risks.