The Stigma Matrix

Gender, Globalization, and the Agency of Pakistan's Frontline Women

Fauzia Husain

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9781503636057
  9781503632370
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781503636064
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: Social Sciences

As developing states adopt neoliberal policies, more and more working-class women find themselves pulled into the public sphere. They are pressed into wage work by a privatizing and unstable job market. Likewise, they are pulled into public roles by gender mainstreaming policies that developing states must sign on to in order to receive transnational aid. Their inclusion into the political economy is very beneficial for society, but is it also beneficial for women? In The Stigma Matrix Fauzia Husain draws on the experiences of policewomen, lady health workers, and airline attendants, all frontline workers who help the Pakistani state, and its global allies, address, surveil, and discipline veiled women citizens. These women, she finds, confront a stigma matrix: a complex of local and global, historic, and contemporary factors that work together to complicate women's integration into public life. The experiences of the three groups Husain examines reveal that inclusion requires more than quotas or special seats. This book advances critical feminist and sociological frameworks on stigma and agency showing that both concepts are made up of multiple layers of meaning, and are entangled with elite projects of hegemony.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The Global Constituents of Sexualized Stigmas in Pakistan
• 2. The Meso Level of the Stigma Matrix: The Contexts of Stigma in Frontline Work
• 3. Veiled Delicacy: Agentic Responses to Stigma in the Pakistani Police Force
• 4. Sacred Conduits: Stigma and the Agency of Health Workers
• 5. Mavens of Mobility: How Airline Women Navigate Stigma
• 6. Spectacular Agency: Stunning Dramas of Recruitment
• Conclusion: Moving Forward with the Stigma Matrix
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover