Gender, Textile Work, and Tunisian Women’s Liberation by Claire Oueslati-Porter

Author:Claire Oueslati-Porter
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030241049
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Women workers’ pregnant or non-pregnant bodies, bodily functions, body movements, and even gestures, their habitus, are disciplined by high quota demands. Women’s facial affect, including expressions like eye rolling and glaring, are common. Facial expressions do not interfere with the pace of production, and they are too subtle to evoke sanction. Other female factory workers agree with Gucem’s action, but rarely does such an overt and disruptive act as standing in front of the manager to ask to sit down help workers’ situation. The other women workers around Gucem not only do not join her critique but discipline her back into the work at hand. Gucem grudgingly goes back to work. Eventually, Gucem quit Z-Textiles to have her baby. Her job was filled by another worker. I asked Bechir about Gucem, but he only shrugged his shoulders and said he did not know anything about her since she quit.

Workers are adept at taking advantage of minuscule opportunities to resist exploitation, as in the following excerpt from my field notes. Sahar stands leaning her ribcage in against the edge of the pattern-cutting table, folding a stack of fabric very slowly with her work partner, Ginaan. The stack of fabric is cut neatly, with the pattern pinned on top, just as it is supposed to be. By some small miracle, Sahar and Ginaan met their quota early today, and they do not want to make the other fabric pattern cutters who aren’t yet finished with their quotas look bad. Sahar and Ginaan are also in no hurry to be given a new pattern to cut. The women’s supervisor, Hayatt will bark out the new orders and chide them to move faster before they even have a chance to begin. Sahar and Ginaan fold up their work as if they were suspended in molasses. They both wear extremely serious facial expressions. Bechir and Hayatt do not notice that Sahar and Ginaan are already finished with their quota.

Sahar “accidentally” drops the fabric on the floor. She feigns a look of serious aggravation with herself and slowly kneels to the floor to pick the fabric pattern back up. Once she has knelt, she reaches her hand lightning-fast under the table to her secret bottle of Coca-Cola and takes a protracted gulp. Lightening quick, she returns the bottle to its hiding place, picks up the fabric, and rises ever so slowly. She and Ginaan start to fold the pile of patterns all over again. They seem to be savoring this little moment without stress, as well as the fact that they are pulling it off. They fold slowly and seriously, as if they had to concentrate hard to fold the fabric into little rectangular piles.

From her desk, Hayatt still hasn’t noticed that they are finished. Sahar discusses what she will cook for dinner. Sahar complains about her brother, who she knows will be sitting on the sofa when she arrives home, while her Mom cleans and washes all by herself. “He does nothing!” Sahar says. “And

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