GENDER, WORK AND ETHNICITY : AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF FEMALE FACTORY WORKERS IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

This ethnography explores and analyses the experiences and consciousness of a group of female factory workers in a disc drive factory in Singapore. The fieldwork consisted of a factory phase during which I worked/researched for three months in a factory, an interview phase during which I interviewed the women and some of the supervisors, and a third phase of sustained interaction with the women I contextualise my research in Chapter One. I sketch the phenomenon of and the major debates about women workers in export-oriented industries, my response to these debates and my divergent interests. I show why the questions I ask and how I go about seeking answers are of sociological significance. In so doing, I will explain why I choose the ethnographic mode of inquiry, how this is bound up by my orientation to phenomenological and ethnomethodological sociology, and my ideas about viable feminist research methods. One of the central features of the thesis is the location of my researcher-self within it. I believe that whatever is known in a research situation can logically only be known through the medium of the researcher. Hence, in Chapter Two, I discuss the research process. This includes a history of the fieldwork and a discussion of field roles and field relations. In Chapter Three, I explore the meaning of work to the women in my study. I present a critique of the why 'gender' has often been used in the sociology of work. There is also a managerial perspective in Singapore which sees women workers as weak in their commitment to wage work because of their orientation to the home. I argue against this position, exploring the complex interaction between work and family in the lives of the women that I studied. In Chapter Four, I analyse the nature of women's consciousness within the workplace. The work ethnography is an introduction to the 'culture' of the particular factory that I studied. Against this background, I discuss the women's actions in negotiating 'target' and their responses to control in various ways. I argue that the women's words and deeds may be read partly, as stemming from a sense of 'class'. This shaded into what I call a factory consciousness. I felt, however, that the dominant motif in the women's consciousness was gender. I explore the elements of this. Finally, I locate the women's consciousness in the wider context of women's life experiences and conditions in Singapore. The social construction of ethnicity within the factory is looked at in Chapter Five. The nature of ethnic phenomena was often fleeting and elliptical. To capture this, I first look at ethnicity as a 'worded entity', through members' linguistic activities. I also discussed how differential linguistic skills could be drawn up on as an interactional resource for throwing up ethnicity. I maintain that there was also convivial ethnicity. Chapter Six comprise the biographies of two women. In these biographies, the wider themes of gender, work and family are reflected. Finally, In Chapter Seven, I set the women's experiences against dominant discourse on women in Singapore.