The gendered political economy of control and resistance on the shop floor of the multinational firm: A case-study from Malaysia

The female factory worker features widely in feminist or 'gendered' approaches in international political economy (IPE). Such studies draw attention to the way in which the spread of labour intensive, export-oriented manufacturing has depended on the construction of gendered production processes that are based on the exploitation and control of low waged female labour. In this article I draw upon case-study research conducted in Malaysia in order to show how the low waged, supposedly 'docile and diligent' factory 'girl' is produced through the articulation of both multinational-corporate and state level gendered regimes of control. These gendered practices of control are shown to operate at a number of different levels: at the level of an authoritarian state effectively preventing organised labour resistances in the most feminised sectors of the export economy; at an ideological level (in the construction of ideas concerning the ideal female factory worker); and at a material level (how these ideas feed into a gendered hierarchy within the work-force that confines certain groups of mainly female workers to low paid assembly line work and subjects them to an intensive factory discipline). © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd.