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Gender, Labor, and Socio-Economic Power in a Tunisian Export Processing Zone Claire Therese Oueslati-Porter University of South Florida, [email protected]

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Gender, Labor, and Socio-Economic Power in a Tunisian Export Processing Zone Claire Therese Oueslati-Porter University of South Florida, Clairelati@Hotmail.Com University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School January 2011 The aM ghreb Maquiladora: Gender, Labor, and Socio-Economic Power in a Tunisian Export Processing Zone Claire Therese Oueslati-Porter University of South Florida, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Scholar Commons Citation Oueslati-Porter, Claire Therese, "The aM ghreb Maquiladora: Gender, Labor, and Socio-Economic Power in a Tunisian Export Processing Zone" (2011). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/3737 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Maghreb Maquiladora: Gender, Labor, and Socio-Economic Power in a Tunisian Export Processing Zone by Claire Oueslati-Porter A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Anthropology College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Kevin Yelvington, Ph.D. Chair: Stephen Thornton, Ph.D. Mark Amen, Ph.D. Maria Crummett, Ph.D. Susan Greenbaum, Ph.D. Rebecca Zarger, Ph.D. Date of Approval: October 28, 2011 Keywords: globalization, culture, women, factory, stratification Copyright © 2011 Claire Oueslati-Porter Dedication I thank my parents, Suzanne and Terry, for instilling in me a belief in social justice, and a curiosity about the world. To my grandmothers, Margaret and Eunice, who told me their stories about living in New Guinea and Algeria. I would like to thank my husband, Maher, for supporting me in this endeavor. I thank my husband‟s family, Khadouja, Khadari, Burhan, Noureddine, Talel, Awatef, and Kalthoum, for their thousands of kindnesses. I thank my sister in law, Kalthoum, for being there, for enjoying the time (and being patient) with Faris and me in Bizerte. Also to Heather, who helped me consider from multiple perspectives the lives of Tunisian women. I dedicate this dissertation to Faris, who, at two and a half, made the field experience what it was. To our long evening walks/stroller rides through Bizerte. Acknowledgments Many organizations and professionals made this dissertation possible. I wish to thank Dr. Kevin Yelvington for his encouragement in conducting this research, which began when I first took his graduate seminar on gender and labor. In appreciation for all the time that Dr. Yelvington has taken in thinking critically about this research, and for suggesting the title, the “Maghreb Maquiladora.” I also thank Dr. Susan Greenbaum, who offered guidance for this research from the time I began the doctoral program and took her introductory seminar. I wish to thank Dr. Mark Amen, who offered polemics about globalization in his seminar, where I made the final decision to go forward with this research. I also wish to thank Dr. John Napora, who offered encouragement and theoretical critique throughout this process. I am grateful to the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, who awarded me a doctoral dissertation research grant which helped make possible my field research in Bizerte. Also to CEMAT, and especially to Kerry Adams and Larry Michelac who met with me and helped me get through the government paperwork to get approval for doing research outside of Tunis in Bizerte. Table of Contents List of Tables…………………………………………………………………………….ii Abstract…………………………………………………………………………............iii Introduction……………………………………………………….. ……………………1 Chapter One: Tunisia‟s History into the Present: Political Economy, Ethnicity, and Gender……………………………………………………………………………….....37 Chapter Two: The Anthropology of Gender in Contested Places: Men, Women, and Power in the Mediterranean Region and in World Market Factories.............................117 Chapter Three: Research Methods in Export Processing Zones and in the Middle East and North Africa………………………………………………………………….194 Chapter Four: Cutting Old and New Patterns of Gender in Z-Textiles………………..261 Chapter Five: Class, Labor, Gender, and Sex in the City of Bizerte…………………..340 Chapter Six: Neo-liberalism Laid Threadbare…………………………………………408 References……………………………………………………………………………..426 Appendices…………………………………………………………………………….441 i List of Tables Table One: Leading Exports of Tunisia …………………………………………....442 Table Two: Mean Years of Schooling ………………………………………..........443 Table Three: Manufacturing Wages ……………………………………………….443 Table Four: Estimated Earned Income ………………………………….................444 Tables Five: Unemployment in Selected MENA Countries……………………….444 ii Abstract This study is about Tunisian women‟s work and lives in the present era of economic neoliberalism. The focus is women in the city of Bizerte, Tunisia, both those who work in Bizerte‟s export processing zone (EPZ), as well as those who work outside it. This study is a qualitative examination of formal and informal employment, set inside and outside of women‟s traditional political and economic domain, the home. Through ethnography of women‟s work and lives, this study‟s purpose is to contribute evidence against conflating women‟s “empowerment” with incorporation into global production. However, this study also lends itself to considerations of the possibilities for exertions of power, powers that women in Bizerte now seek that opened through the forces of globalization. iii Introduction The pregnant woman rubs her belly and begs the cheffa, Madame Hayatt, to let her sit down. Madame Hayatt calls over the manager, Bechir, who is smoking with the other men in the doorway. Bechir approaches the women‟s work area with his cigarette in his mouth. “Gucem wants a break again,” says Madame Hayatt. Bechir rolls his eyes and tries to walk past Gucem, but she steps into his path. She looks him in the eyes, holds her protruding abdomen, and says, “but I have pain.” Bechir replies, “You ask for time to rest every day. Maybe you would prefer to be at home? I can get another girl in here to take your place in an hour. Are you ready to go?” Gucem stares down at the floor. Still rubbing her belly, she steps to the side, and Bechir walks past her. Madame Hayatt walks toward another work table, and says to herself “God, help me.” Gucem returns to her table and picks up her push pins. She shouts across the table to her workmate, Faizeh, “It is so hot, like we are in Hell!” Faizeh has push pins gripped between her lips. She makes eye contact with Gucem for a second, and then she slides the fabric pattern back across the table to Gucem to fold. Gucem continues, “Bechir has a list of other girls who will take our jobs… (She sucks her teeth). Madame Hayatt, she is just as bad. They use us, all they do is use us.” This statement could have come from a historical study of colonial Tunisia, in certain ways. It could have been said by a Tunisian peasant woman 1 about her husband or in-laws, who would have expected her to work from dawn to dusk doing menial, grueling farm tasks. This statement could have been made by an urban Tunisoise woman pressured by her husband or in-laws to weave fabrics on a home loom to be sold by kinsmen in the souk, threatening violence or repudiation divorce if she did not labor quickly enough. This statement also could have been said by a woman in the post-1956, independent Tunisia, where women‟s circumstances had not changed as much as was promised under Habib Bourguiba‟s Personal Status Codes (PSC‟s). This study is about Tunisian women‟s work and lives in the present era of economic neoliberalism. I focus on women in the city of Bizerte, Tunisia, both those who work in Bizerte‟s export processing zone (EPZ), as well as those who work outside it. I examine formal and informal employment, set inside and outside the home. I aim to contribute to the body of anthropology of gender in factories. Through ethnography of women‟s work and lives, I hope to add evidence to against conflating women‟s “empowerment” with incorporation into global production. However, I also consider the possibilities for exertions of power that women in Bizerte now seek that have opened through the forces of globalization. I root this analysis in the context of women‟s contemporary labor and cultural practice related to the pre-colonial and colonial Tunisian past. Rural and urban Tunisian women‟s textile work is a culturally normative form of gendered labor, a common socio-historic cultural feature along all shores of the Mediterranean (e.g., Barber 1994; Collins 1993). While the fabric itself has changed little, the context, the EPZ, is different from the traditional milieu of 2 women‟s work. The argument that women‟s work is essentially the same, that there is some sort of cultural continuity, obfuscates the importance of the economic system in which labor takes place (Beneria 1987; Yelvington 1995). Things have changed in Tunisia, especially the gendered circumstances of labor. The percentage of women in paid labor rose from six percent in 1966 to twenty-five percent in 2003 (Moghadam 2005). The proletarianization of women is under way, and its impacts on culture are complicated (Wilson 2004). In traditional textile work, Tunisian women have been and are exploited by their families; this is a normative feature of the patriarchal Arab kinship structure (Abu-Lughod 1993; Abu-Zahra 1986; Barber 1994; Hijab 1996; Holmes-Eber 2003; Moghadam 2005). In this stratified gender system, women do the knitting, weaving, loom-work and embroidery in the domestic space which is so heavily gendered in the Maghreb. However, women have little control over wealth in terms of the means of production or the terms of sale, arguably making them a proletariat in the kinship system (Hijab 1996; Hochschild 1968; Lazreg 1994; Tekaki 2006).
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