Gender Eclipsed? Racial Hierarchies in Transnational Call Center Work

FEMINIST ETHNOGRAPHIES ON THE NATURE OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM HAVE PROVIDED A wealth of knowledge on gendered nature of transnational subcontracting and on ways that women many parts of Asia, Caribbean, and Latin America have been constructed as workers within transnational factories producing garments, food products, shoes, electronics, and transcriptions at nominal cost developing countries. This article explores a seemingly opposite trend at play Indian call centers that provide voice-to-voice service to U.S. clients. Call center work is many ways epitome of what is commonly seen as Providing good service on telephone requires skills associated with hegemonic femininity, such as being nice, making customers feel comfortable, and dealing with irate customers (Hochschild, 1983; Steinberg and Figart, 1999; Leidner, 1999). Yet, interestingly enough, call center work newly emerging centers New Delhi is not always segregated by gender. In fact, interviews I conducted, managers, trainers, and workers unanimously and emphatically construct their jobs call centers as free of gender-bias and equally appropriate for male and female workers. (1) This article evaluates these discursive claims of occupational desegregation transnational call center work India. I argue that gender segregation segments of outsourced call center industry India is situated within context of racial hierarchies between Indian workers and Western customers, which fundamentally structure transnational service work. Gender is eclipsed sense that it is hidden behind a profound, racialized gendering of jobs at a transnational level. Segregation and Desegregation Global Production One hallmark of transnational subcontracted work has been vast numbers of jobs specifically targeted for women workers. Since 1970s, researchers have noted women's overrepresentation export-processing industries (Salzinger, 2003: 12). As Basu and Grewal (2001: 943) summarize, capitalism [has] depended on sexism order to be global. Ong (1991: 287) notes that if we look at figures for all off-shore industries, women tend to comprise lower-paid half of total industrial work force developing countries.... They are concentrated a few industries: textiles, apparel, electronics, and footwear. Women's appropriateness for these jobs is often defined ideological terms (such as natural dexterity or assumed nimbleness) and women workers earn 30 to 40% less than men do worldwide (Steans, 2003: 368). Salzinger traces ways which women have been constructed as ideal workers Mexican maquilas, whereby 'femininity' has become closely linked to productivity, and 'masculinity' to sloth and disruption (2003: 10; Bergeron, 2001; Carty, 1997; Ong, 1991). As Steans (2003: 368) notes, in Asia, 1980s, women made up 85 percent of workers Export Production Zones. In other areas, figure for women workers was typically around 75 percent. More recently, feminists writing about transnational global regimes have noted growing desegregation of traditionally feminized subcontracted jobs. Meera Nanda (2000: 26), for example, provides evidence of rising defeminization of offshore work, arguing that computer-aided manufacture and flexible production techniques are changing skill requirements and gender composition of workers employed by apparel and microelectronics industries. Nanda notes that women face risk of being displaced from export-oriented sector as men fill more skilled and better jobs. Salzinger similarly documents growing integration of men into maquiladoras a case study of a factory that employs an equal number of women and men. She notes that the subjects who are enacted are not ungendered; they are implicitly masculinized and all workers are assumed to be breadwinners automatically invested autonomy and high productivity (Ibid. …

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