Women Workers in Turkey

Global Industrial Production in Istanbul

Saniye Dedeoglu

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781845114787
• eBook ISBN: 9780857734006
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Political Economy
• Index: Social Sciences

Globalisation is a great generator of jobs, but one that does not protect those at the bottom of the labour supply chain. Saniye Dedeoglu's compelling study of women workers in Istanbul's garment industry shows exactly how globalisation has affected women engaged in insecure, invisible and low or unpaid work. She reveals how industries have adapted their labour demands to make use of local female labour supplies, and highlights the strategies and responses that have evolved in response to contemporary changes in global industrial production in Turkey. Dedeoglu shows how production for global markets has seeped into local labour markets, contributing to a culture of work which is informal and so throws up the critical question of what it means to be a woman in today's globalised society. This book illuminates key issues in sociology and gender studies, and makes an important contribution to the social and economic consequences of globalisation for the least privileged in industrial societies.

1

INTRODUCTION

This book examines how global industrial production and the channels of global trade have adapted their labour demands to and made use of local female labour supplies and the culture of work that is continuously geared towards making women’s work invisible. It explores the relationship between industrial production and the employment of women in the global era from the perspective of the most invisible participants in that production. The material presented here explores the strategies and responses that have evolved in response to contemporary changes in global industrial production and its effects on women’s labour supply, and how the production for global markets that has penetrated into the local labour markets of Istanbul, Turkey, is contributing to patterns of community-based survival strategies.

Sharing the basic premise of Beneria and Roldan, developed in The Crossroads of Class and Gender (1987), that the demand for women’s labour represents a response to competition in international markets that pushes companies to resort to flexible home-based subcontracting arrangements, my argument is that global industrial production strategies rely on increasingly diversified forms of women’s labour performing for different markets such as domestic markets, Western markets, and informal international trade. The concerted efforts of international capital to find cheaper sources of labour supply also utilise women’s home-based work by integrating it into global industrial production without changing women’s roles within the family as mothers and wives.

In the current phase of capitalist development, global industrial production and trade are examined within a web of relationships between producers located in different countries. The global commodity chain approach analyses how industrial production is organised around the market-driven needs of large retailers. ‘Buyer-driven chains’ are formed by large retailers or branded marketers which arrange for the manufacture of their products through global sourcing linkages (Gereffi 1994:99). The workforce in developing countries, which has been an adjunct of global economic restructuring, meets the labour requirements of this production. Global economic restructuring has generated a large supply of jobs and casual labour markets that facilitates the employment of disadvantaged workers, such as women and immigrant workers, all over the world. In most places, associated with the increasing flexibility and casualisation of labour markets, the number of women workers has been recorded to be increasing (Standing 1999; Pearson 1998; Elson 1996). It is also observed that the demand for female labour is highly differentiated, generating employment in advanced factories, in sweatshops and at home.

This research presents original findings in a number of ways. The dynamic nature of the relationship between global production and the variety of local work patterns created by this production and trade has been neglected in the current literature of globalisation and work, which has been generally preoccupied with constructing one single image of industrial production and employment rather than with the ways in which a tendency towards increasingly homogenised production through global firms, vertically integrated firms and global production networks demands an extremely diversified labour force. The empirical sections document the complexities of the labour market and women’s employment in the garment industry of Istanbul, which is a highly global industry producing for world markets. Different segments of garment production together create a demand for different patterns of women’s work, ranging from factory employment to atelier work and home-based work. These patterns are strongly related to how the industry integrates with global markets and reveals the prevalent organisation of production today in one of the key industries of Turkey. The book therefore offers a contribution to the literature on women, gender and global markets, drawing on anthropological and sociological perspectives in order to address questions of critical importance to the social sciences.

Research for the book was conducted among the women workers of Istanbul’s garment industry, which has been recorded as the export champion of Turkish outward development strategy since the early 1980s. A fifteen-month period of fieldwork carried out in Istanbul and a close investigation of the garment industry, topped up with participant observation and in-depth interviews, included women workers, garment sweatshop owners, their families, factory managers, and those engaged in informal work and other forms of invisible work in the garment industry. At a descriptive level the book reveals the lives of women engaged in the insecure, invisible, and low/unpaid end of the labour market and the production relations of the global industry in Turkey, and its place in global markets.

1.1 Globalisation, Industrial Production and Women’s Work

The informalisation of women’s work all over the world has come hand in hand with a feminisation of employment that has been a partial result of the increasing casualisation of labour markets as a result of global economic restructuring. A similar trend of increasing use of women’s informal work has been observed in many areas of urban Turkey by feminists and other scholars. Garment production in Istanbul has been one of the major sectors creating a high demand for women’s informal work at various levels. The most important forms of demand for women’s work have been atelier work and home-based piecework drawing women into garment production. Therefore, the first objective of this research is to explore the nature of women’s employment in the garment industry of Istanbul, where no official increase has been recorded in women’s labour market activities. Although women’s labour is largely unacknowledged in Turkish society and unrecorded in the official statistics, and it appears that women’s involvement in labour market activities is decreasing, constituting Turkey as an exceptional case against other developing countries such as Latin America and Southeast Asian countries where the rates of female employment have been increasing with the implementation of export-oriented policies, a challenge to official statistics in Turkey is needed to make women’s work more visible. A similar situation is found in Mitter’s study on London’s garment industry, where a sizable portion of garment work was shifted to home-based producers, mostly women, as a result of labour market restructuring and firm downsizing, resulting in the exclusion of these women’s work from official statistics (Mitter 1986).

The second objective of this research is to examine the demand factors that condition women’s work in Istanbul’s garment industry. The structure of the industry and the forms of garment production’s integration into world markets affect the ways in which women enter into garment production. The dominance of small-scale family-run garment ateliers in the industry provides the grounds for attracting women from the same family circle into production, often informally and usually unpaid, while keeping their domestic identities as mothers, wives and daughters intact. The engagement of women in family-based garment production under the shadow of their domestic identities, without any public recognition of their work, casts doubts on the separation between women’s public and private sphere activities. The entanglement between women’s domestic and public activities provides a useful case study to show how difficult it is to separate the one from the other.

A very useful distinction made by Elson (1999) between women’s labour force participation, which includes all types of employment status (employee, self-employed, and unpaid family labour), and labour market participation, which excludes unpaid family labour, shows that women’s garment work in Turkey remains unrecognised and under-recorded due to the fact that it is considered as labour market participation. Elson (1999) points to the measurable gaps that exist between women’s labour force and labour market participation. Labour force participation including all types of employment status or ‘productive activities’ is counted as a part of national production. On the other hand, the unpaid, unmarketed caring activities of women, the ‘reproductive economy’, are also crucial for the functioning of society as a whole and contribute to the reproduction of ‘productive’ labour, but are excluded from national accounts. Elson suggests that a large gender gap between labour force and labour market participation exists in every society (1999:614).

Istanbul’s garment industry produces for different markets. These markets differ in terms of their place in global commodity chains, the domestic market and informal international trade, creating a diversified demand for women’s labour at each level. Pearson (1998) emphasises the different forms of industrial production, which demand different patterns of female employment. A historical account of women’s industrial work indicating the changing roles and places of women’s work shows the variety of forms of women’s engagement in industrial production. My aim in this research is to show that the various forms of work, factory, informal atelier and home-based piecework, exist in a single sector combining the different demands of women’s work. Analysing formal factory, small-scale atelier and home-based garment production together enables us to identify different categories of women workers, whose work is disguised mostly by the informal nature of export-led industrial production. The recognition that manufacturing production consists not only of formal large-scale production but also extends into more diversified forms, combining small-scale atelier, subcontracted and home-based production (Beneria and Roldan 1987; Cinar 1994; White 1994), reveals the utilisation of different categories of female labour, varying in skill and wage composition. The subcontracting relations utilised in Istanbul’s garment industry that effectively connect firms, households and communities to one another also increase the need for flexibilisation of the workforce and for the use of informal workers, mostly women. My objective is, therefore, to analyse how different types and scales of industrial production, such as factory, atelier and home-based production in the garment sector, utilise different categories of female labour in Turkey, in ways that conceal the extent of women’s actual labour force participation.

The location of the Turkish garment industry provides a useful case study of garment production regimes, offering a geographically specific example of supply chains and a contribution to debates about economic globalisation. The global connection that the Turkish garment sector has established through different market niches, such as the domestic market, transitional markets in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and European markets, offers a contribution to the further development of the literature of value chains at the same time as divorcing it from its Eurocentric focus by endorsing industrial production and trade channels at a real global level. The global commodity chains approach (Gereffi 1994) analyses the garment industry organised around the market-driven needs of large retailers. ‘Buyer-driven chains’ are formed by large retailers or branded marketers that arrange for the manufacturing of their products through global sourcing linkages (Gereffi 1994:99). However, not all garment production in Istanbul is done for large retailers and European (or western) markets. Therefore, the diversity of markets and consumption niches that govern garment production and its labour requirements is highlighted.

The focus of enquiry of this research is on the garment industry and women’s employment, and it seeks to explore the structure of the industry, women’s role in it and the social construction of women’s work in Turkey. Thus, my third objective is to provide an understanding of the supply factors conditioning women’s entry into garment production in Istanbul. The factors affecting the supply of women’s labour to the industry include household structure, gender ideology and relations, migration and community in urban areas, and the need for economic survival at the level of the household. These factors interact in specific ways to mediate women’s work in Istanbul, to shape the nature of women’s employment, and to determine the degree of employment opportunities accessible for women, causing women to be a cheap labour source for garment production. It will also be shown how the prevailing culture of Turkish society and its gender relations are mediated and renegotiated in order to make women’s entrance into production possible. The operation of family-run ateliers and the location of garment production in low-income neighbourhoods are important factors affecting the extent of women’s work.

The employment opportunities offered in the informal economy are a good focus for an illumination of the relationship between industrial production and women’s work and its interaction with gender relations. Women’s work in garment ateliers and home-based piecework has been shaped by the priority given to their traditional roles as mothers, wives and daughters. Traditional roles and ideologies are enforced through the conditions under which women’s work is conceptualised as temporary and men’s work as the main source of household income. The double burden of wage work and domestic labour, together with prevailing ideologies of gender and womanhood, continues to portray women as supplementary workers even when they are becoming increasingly important economic contributors to the household economy. Therefore, a radical alteration in women’s domestic and public roles is not experienced when women’s work is heavily controlled by family members in the same workplace. For all these reasons, it is possible to argue that as long as women’s work is confined within the circles of family, kinship and neighbourhood-based networks, employment is practised as an extension of those domestic roles and as a temporary state rather than a radical departure from the confines of the patriarchal system. Rather, women’s employment in the garment industry enforces their domestic roles as mothers, wives and daughters, due to the dominance of family-based atelier production.

Women’s trade-offs between ‘patriarchal security’ and paid employment and the conflicting images of working women and the ‘woman of her home’ (evinin kadını) are eased through a set of mediating factors adopted by the community and the families of women workers. The justification for taking paid work is almost always connected with the aim of providing for their families, and before women can take up paid employment the consent (izin) of the male or senior female authority must be secured at all times. Despite the crises created over women’s identity through paid work, women themselves very often make an extra effort to show that priority is always given to their domestic identities. Even their public demands and negotiations are voiced by the utilisation of those roles and remain within their confines. Seemingly, women’s internalisation of traditional gender roles and identities allows them to move into the public arena and take up paid work without losing social protection and security. In this regard, women exchange their labour in the informal economy as a symbol of the manifestation of their community membership and identity in urban Turkey.

Family and community relations not only mediate women’s labour into the informally operated family-run ateliers but also are used effectively to allow women’s entrance into the labour market. Recruitment strategies utilised in different segments of the garment sector are sealed by the dominance of family and kinship relations, allowing the reflection of socially constructed male dominance that filters through into women’s workplace experience. This research will help to show that labour markets are ‘bearers of gender’, in the sense that they are instantiations of the gender relations in the society in which the labour market is embedded. Social relations as bearers of gender, although not gender-ascriptive, reflect existing problems of gender domination and subordination at institutional levels, such as household, community, the market and the state (Elson 1999:612). The embeddedness of the labour market in Turkey results in the invisibility of women’s work without any public recognition of the work that is done, even in the case where the contribution women make has a great deal of importance for their families, communities, their country and world production.

The overall aim of this research is to render women’s work more visible in Turkey by highlighting the role of women in the garment industry. Women’s public invisibility and their exclusion from official statistics are the result of the intersection between the nature of demand in the garment industry and traditional gender roles affecting women’s labour supply for Istanbul’s garment industry. By looking at the intersection of these two sets of factors, demand and supply, I use my data to illuminate the nature of women’s work and women’s entrance into global production networks. There is a further intention to contribute to debates about economic globalisation, the feminisation and informalisation of employment, and the interrelations of such developments with gender relations.

1.2 Studying Women’s Industrial Work

Given these concerns a qualitative and biographical approach would be the most appropriate. In exploring the dynamics of the relationship between global industrial production and the implications for local female labour supply and the culture of work in Turkey, the focus was on the categories that women employ in their everyday lives and on the community networks that sustain women’s social links. Chamberlayne and Rustin, advocating the use of a biographical approach, note that a biographical method, through contextualising statistical data and demonstrating what they mean for individual lives, contains implications for social policy, and furthermore that such an approach can highlight the network of existing relations between the individual and others (1996:21).

The point is that people live their lives within the material and cultural boundaries of their time span, and so life histories are exceptionally effective historical sources because through the totality of lived experience they reveal relations between individuals and social forces, which are rarely apparent in other sources (Lumis 1987:107–8).

In-depth, open-ended, non-structured interviews and oral narratives were the methods utilised to give voice to the women whose experiences of industrial work are at the centre of this study. Using these methods is the most suitable way of describing and analysing women’s experiences from their own perspectives and making sense of their place in the world. These methods also capture interactions and interconnections between people and events, as they provide flexibility for explanation and allow space to the narrator to express himself or herself by reducing the control and direction of interviewer over interviewee (Borland 1991; Gluck and Patai 1991). In addition, open-ended and in-depth interviews, according to Anderson and Jack, represent a shift from asking the right questions to focusing on process and ‘the dynamic unfolding nature of the subject’s viewpoint’ (1991:23).

My interest in exploring the connections between global industrial production and local female labour supply and the structure of the local informal networks affecting women’s access to labour markets meant that developing a more situated understanding of the interactions between gender relations and culture of work involved locating myself within the communities where the urban poor lived in Istanbul. Wolf has pointed out that researchers need to locate themselves and their personal objectives and experiences within the context of their research (Wolf 1996). The representation of Third World women as poor and powerless in contrast to educated, better-off middle-class Western women has often been criticised (Ong 1988, Mohanty 1988, Marchand and Parpart 1994). These critics also drew attention to the inequalities and power relations between the researcher and the researched. Given increasing self-awareness by feminist researchers of their limitations, many are focusing on the reflective mode or simply depicting women’s voices rather than representing their own (Wolf 1996). In producing a more situated knowledge on women’s industrial work and to reflect those women’s voices it was felt that my social background as an insider would prove to be a valuable asset in conducting this research. My position goes beyond being an insider, since I was doing research on people with whom I share a similar background and class position. I am from a working-class family and my mother used to be a textile factory worker. Moreover, I live in the outskirts of Istanbul in a neighbourhood that was similar to the locations where my informants lived. During the fieldwork I continued to live in the place I grew up, which was a good location to observe low-income working-class families and their day-to-day expe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword by Deniz Kandiyoti
• 1. INTRODUCTION
• 2. GLOBAL INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION AND FEMALE EMPLOYMENT
• 3. THE MACRO CONTEXT: SOCIO-ECONOMIC CHANGE, LABOUR MARKETS AND FEMALE EMPLOYMENT IN TURKEY
• 4. THE GARMENT INDUSTRY IN ISTANBUL AND DEMAND FOR FEMALE LABOUR
• 5. WOMEN WORKERS IN ISTANBUL: Factory Women, Atelier Girls and Pieceworker Housewives
• 6. PATRIARCHY, GENDER AND LABOUR SUPPLY IN GECEKONDU NEIGHBORHOODS OF ISTANBUL
• 7. WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE: RECRUITMENT AND MOBILITY
• 8. CONCLUSION
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Glossary of Terms
• Index
• eCopyright