Who is an ideal worker?

While there is no singular answer to this question, Leslie Salzinger’s ‘Genders in Production: Making Workers in Mexico’s Global Factories’ published by the University of California Press in 2003 examines one such trope in transnational production: the docile, dexterous, and above all, a female factory worker in third world countries. Such images are imprinted in the popular imagination, to the extent that most people take for granted that such ideal workers do exist and are employed in such jobs. Even when such conceptions are questioned, the tendency is to examine overarching ideologies of transnational production and globalisation. Leslie Salzinger, a sociologist from UC Berkeley attempts to subvert both ends of the spectrum, arguing through her detailed ethnographic work that while women factory workers do not exist naturally, their existence and visibility are not owed only to the higher demands of transnational production chains.

Through ethnographic fieldwork conducted over 16 months in four distinct maquilas (factories) of North Mexico, Salzinger explores how the trope of the ready-made women worker achieved the status of natural fact, a static imagination of gender at work. She further explores the role of gendered meanings in constituting subjects in global factories, examining how imaginations of gender in transnational production impact local desires for a particular kind of workforce. The book is divided into three broad sections: in the first, Salzinger introduces the content and lays out the theoretical and methodological frameworks through which she conducted her research. The next four chapters are dedicated to each of the four maquilas in which Salzinger worked during her time as a researcher. Finally, the book concludes with an examination of her findings and larger implications of the same.

Salzinger not only uses ethnography in this book but sees it as an ‘obvious methodological choice’ (Salzinger 2003, p.18) which I found rather interesting. Ethnography to her is obvious due to her positionality, as a feminist researching economic processes through a gendered lens. The reflexive, ethnographic self is very important to Salzinger, who makes it a point to state her positionality, her negotiations, and details of interactions at every stage, particularly at the beginning of the book. She is also transparent about the idiosyncrasies she encountered in the different factories, as well as the difficulties she faced in identifying general patterns during the initial stages of analysis.

Salzinger is a participant in the factory processes of the four maquilas, working alongside the hired workers, with whom she ends up forming friendships outside the workplace as well. Stating that ethnography allowed her to enter such gendered spaces uniquely, Salzinger’s embeddedness in her fieldwork lets readers explore the gendered implications of factory production beyond the physical bounds of the maquila. By depicting how gendered interactions between factory workers operate outside of the maquila, in a bar or the dance floor, for example, Salzinger’s ethnographic presence allows us to examine how gender travels differently through physical spaces and unspoken agreements.

The performativity of gender is a recurrent theme as Salzinger moves through each of the four maquilas. Drawing on Butler’s theorisation of the same from the very beginning, visible in the title ‘Genders in Production’, Salzinger builds up a theoretical framework of gender, labour, and factory environments through which she lays the groundwork for her research and subsequent findings.

Each of the four maquilas Salzinger worked in was distinct: however, the gender of the workers was important to each of the managers, albeit in different ways.  Salzinger’s first point of entry into the maquila industry was ‘Panoptimex’. Panoptimex workers “make flesh the image of productive femininity upon whose existence an entire global political economy claims to have stacked its success” (Salzinger 2003, p. 51). The hiring criteria begin with being female and go on to being slim, having thin hands, not having children etc. There is also an overt air of sexualisation at the plant, with managers constantly making sexual references and objectifying the workers while they inspect the products. Workers have little autonomy over their work, which is always under inspection – as are they. The constant scrutiny of workers coupled with the physical layout of the factory lead to constant surveillance, hence the pseudonym of Panoptimex that Salzinger gives it.

In contrast, Particimex, the second plant, which highlights independence and assertiveness, and where the ratio of men and women workers is also more equal overt gender differences are minimised, which, however, creates other, unique gendered distinctions. Even though women form most of the workforce, more than 90% of the management is male, and women are implicitly discouraged from applying for managerial positions. As gender is ‘absent’ from the factory floor, gendered stereotypes emerge outside the factory in much sharper ways.

Gender as an asset for production, whether through physical characteristics or supposedly innate mental traits such as docility and obedience, is highlighted through the hiring practices of managers in most maquilas, not just the two outlined above. On the other hand, the third plant Salzinger works in is Andromex, which is a sharp departure from the majority of maquilas in that the workers are masculinised, despite 50% of the workforce being women. Finally, Salzinger introduces us to Anarchomex, which she describes as a failure. Here the majority of the workforce are men, but managers insist on feminising production which causes men to feel humiliated and spend their days contesting such conceptions. Managers insist on feminising production nonetheless because of their belief that women are much more desirable as maquila workers. In Anarchomex, gender serves as a hindrance rather than an asset.

Salzinger’s conclusions are covered in the final chapters. She argues that the femininity that maquila managers are so eagerly seeking is created: not by the tropes of transnational production, but by the interplay of such abstract ideals with the local understandings of femininity and masculinity. These maquilas produce gender as much as they produce television sets or hospital uniforms, but these productions are not created through linear trains of thought or traditionally gendered division of labour: they are created by a fantasy of globalisation.

While I enjoyed reading this book, I believe there are certain aspects which could have been improved. My main critique, however, is that Salzinger spends a lot of time making and reformulating the same argument, which makes the reader lose interest at times, and also could have better been utilised by furthering some of her arguments instead. In the concluding chapter, for example, Salzinger attempts to show how her findings are significant beyond the context of Mexico’s maquilas. While I do agree that her work raises important questions on how transnational production is inherently gendered and the numerous implications that have, I do not believe this came through very well in Salzinger’s writing.

Nonetheless, Salzinger’s ethnography serves as an interesting lens through which to examine and reflect upon how gender is imagined and concretised in different ways. The performance of gender required by the labour market and the conceptions of ‘third world women’ that are intrinsic to such ideals allow the reader to reflexively examine what such phrases evoke for them, and how gender, labour, class, and globalisation are linked together in more complex ways than a linear or unidirectional lens.

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Krithi Ramaswamy is pursuing her Masters in Anthropology and Sociology from the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.