Women’s Laborers Transitioning and Reskilling through Digital Divides: What we learn from the juxtaposition of contexts from the Varied Geographical and Socio-cultural Contexts

Radhika Gajjala

[Note: Please do not cite without permission - for citation details -  - contact me, radhika@cyberdiva.org if you want to see elaborations of this project - this is a developing project and I would love discussion.

I had originally written this as my contribution to the GWO presentation and then it started to become a humongous project drawing in various collaborators, so I decided to pull this part out and we are going with another plan for the conference presentation - but since it is written and  begun - and its a developing project - I thought I'd share on the blog - more to come later.].

This article addresses ‘transition’ within a variety of contexts wherein subjectivities are negotiated at the intersection of age, gender, technology, and hierarchies of literacies and skills called for by a globalization that is shaped by transnational corporations and their need for cheap labor forces. In such a context, women, now in their midlife, who have not been able to devote their entire life to careers are faced with a need to reskill and transition into a work environment that continually upgrades technologically and organizationally. Such women are often women who have been displaced from their jobs and in their personal lives after having devoted their best years to a system that now devalues their life experience, skills and literacies. At the same time such women are needed to contribute service labor at lower levels of the hierarchy. Classified as being not skilled enough and therefore needing training – these women often re-enter the labor force as cheap labor  with no benefits. In a global climate where workers are increasing individualized and required structurally to bear material and social risks and the workplace provides less and less support in the form of benefits or structures of social support, such women are faced with the need to go back into the workforce and reskill themselves in the use of new technologies. These are women, who, whether from rural Ohio or rural South India, have spent much of their early wage earning life in supporting , yet responsible for family well-being – both material, physical and social roles both within the family (performing the important yet unpaid immaterial labor of social reproduction) and within work environments outside the home (there too, they have often spent much of their time performing service jobs involving devalued immaterial labor that props up the social relational structures of management and production).

In the interest of trying to understand women’s career/labor mobility and their experiences across contexts in a variety of non-formal and formal work settings, the co-authors of this paper draw on continuing research in geographical locations as diverse as rural South India (using case studies of women who take over handloom weaving from their male family members), urban South Korea, urban Bucharest and rural/urban NW Ohio (both in biracial and working class contexts). Through this  project we hope to unfold how structural attempts to standardize work practices world-wide through layered de-skilling and re-skilling that is done in favor of mobilizing cheap labor forces to perform routine low-skill jobs, immaterial/service labor and middle management work within global work spaces. Ultimately, our argument is that different, seemingly unique, local conditions develop through an emerging global corporate logic of interconnections organized in the service of multinational corporations. However all these located experiences of transition, empowerment or disempowerment in women’s lives are structured by the needs of a particular form of global spatializing logic that functions to standardize workforces while simultaneously standardizing the structure of management and control.

Our empirical investigations involve multi-(qualitative)-methods (collaborators will be named as we solidify some of this a little more). In the case of rural and urban South India, one of the authors draws on ethnographies, online and offline interviews and from pre-existing case-studies and focus groups and interviews conducted in 2009. In continuing work, the co-authors will interview women Bucharest and South Korea. We also plan to re-examine oral histories recorded from a biracial community with a history based in (farm)labor migration from Mexico, which we collected through participator action research methods in 2007 and 2008.

We start to chart the comparisons – commonalities and differences. We thus examine how these different groups of women negotiate the structural imperatives imposed on them through the increasing standardization of business and management practices that facilitate and support the smoother functioning of transnational businesses. Digital divides therefore come into play not just in the form of re-skilling through the use of computers and access to the internet, but also through the shaping of offline service tasks necessitated by organizational structures, marketing practices and production processes that function mostly through digital platforms for management and finance.

who’d a thunk it – my writing with neices leads me back to mapping roots and routes …

“my nostalgia for the rural is so unexplained by my actual life experiences…or on second thoughts maybe not unexplainable at all… while some may locate my yearning/nostalgia in roots in kakaraparru – it may be that the smells of burning wood and mud huts is actually taking me back to rural Africa…? or the rural Thai and Indonesian habitats that were still tucked in the backyards of urbanity of Bangkok, Jakarta, Bandung and even in the touristiness of Bali back in the late 60s and 70s”

A says she sees some parellels between how Sudhir Alladi describes the Chicago “underground” economy and SL economies…

hmmm – I’m not sure I agree myself but can be made to see why she thinks so I am sure

well I am going today – so can discuss this f2f (or cellphone to cellphone locally) at length later this week.
Looking fwd to the “Dhaaram” (thread) shop opening on 10th!

{btw do check out all my shops on SL as well}

Since I will be there only two weeks (thanks to my grad coordinator duties for the summer….) I wont get to the rural areas this time – but the urban Dastkar Andhra work continues. Looking fwd to some more arguing matches with A, S, Sh – shopping for handloom (and SL textures!) with L and A…

Of course – also looking fwd to meeting the rest of the family!
(heh heh;-))

When I get back – I will revise the book proposal on the new SL related book and also finish up the final bits on the edited collection.

Oryx has started the rad Zabibha collection in her store – check it out at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Son/175/174/36

Understanding through doing…. the assignment emphasis was less on techical expertise of website building (most of the builders are beginners) and more on attempting to convey the concept that came from the client (as interpreted and understood by each of the groups based in their socio-cultural contextual locations). Is there a concept without an interface?

Feedback from readers is most welcome (you can email me or post to the blog’s comments)

Kang and Shuang’s DAMA site

[our client LT had this to say about the website - "I really like the website as the process and product are well represented. Visuals are overpowering the information. But the information given is very good in terms of stressing the point that handlooms are better than other power driven mill fabrics without an apologetic tone."]

Anca, Bridget and Erin

[our client's final overview comments on this one - "It is a well designed website. Home page gives a clear indication of the nature of the industry and also explains the characters of handloom fabrics at a glance. It is a wee bit patronizing and also it could have stressed on the fact that the fabric is as stylish and contemporary as the fabrics the consumers are using today."]

Andy, Jacob, Mark

[client's comments - DAMA and Products page although starts with a question but flows into a good description of handloom process and industry. But the products itself were very not communicative enough.

The page on the community is very innovative and would encourage a healthy dialogue.

I also like the narrative as it explains the process and its advantages in a good articulate way. Home page is well done and I like the understated feel although there are a few spelling mistakes.]

Dan and Dexin

[client feedback - The main page is very good as the products are featured and it communicates the product effectively.

The potential buyer’s page gives both the buyer and DAMA a very good platform to establish contact, interact and take the business further.]

Amy, Brett, Nikki

[The sub heading ‘Weaving made Natural’ is very good although it sounds as if we made the technology natural but it gets the point across.

Product representation is very good with details of the fabric quality and aesthetic.

Although there is a whole page dedicated to the Natural dyeing process, there is confusion in the product range as the product ranges shown in the web site are both chemical dyed and natural dyed.]

She created a salwar kameez from Dastkar Andhra fabric:)

వూరు

“Vooru” – I punch that into the Padma telugu transformer – remember that at the theory cluster meeting they asked me if that was a form of insult.

But of course I cant cut and paste it onto the word document – but it works here – so maybe I should continue the notes here and set it to protected….

anyway to get the vooru in my word document (because Ileap or baraha wont work on the mac) I grabbed and saved…

what can I say?

whose voices am I consuming as I say

why can I not say

when you can

but yet you want their authentic voices

what I tell you cannot be trusted

that’s what you say

as if you had heard the authentic

yourself

then why do you need me to reveal it to you

if you know what it should look like?

it goes…

మేము ఇక్కడనుంచి 9 మంది రాజవోలు వర్క్షాప్పుకు వెళ్ళాము…

so now I have to piece together based on all these notes since I cant seem to locate the tapes…