Gender, Textile Work, and Tunisian Women’s Liberation: Deviating Patterns

Description

This book presents ethnographic research conducted in an export zone textile factory in Binzart, Tunisia during the years leading up to the Arab Spring. The author focuses on the sexist management tactics in the factory, as well as women workers’ patterns of resistance and capitulation to sexual objectification and exploitation. Masculinity as enacted by men and by some women is revealed as fundamental to the processes of production. Certain women workers, Oueslati-Porter shows, challenge cisgender norms by appropriating masculinity for themselves, threatening men’s masculine supremacy. Furthermore, socio-cultural surveillance mechanisms in the factory and in the family is curtail the tensions posed by the presence of masculine women. Gender, Textile Work, and Tunisian Women’s Liberation will be of interest to students andscholars of anthropology, sociology, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, LGBTQ+ studies,and Middle East and North Africa studies. Front Matter ....Pages i-ix The Paradoxes of Tunisian Women’s Liberation (Claire Oueslati-Porter)....Pages 1-14 Fieldwork and Family (Claire Oueslati-Porter)....Pages 15-40 Producing Factory Femininity (Claire Oueslati-Porter)....Pages 41-62 Producing Men and Masculinity in the Factory (Claire Oueslati-Porter)....Pages 63-79 Female Masculinity in the Factory (Claire Oueslati-Porter)....Pages 81-104 Back Matter ....Pages 105-110