This event has been cancelled and will be rescheduled for a later date.
Dr. Madhumita Dutta, Assistant Professor, The Ohio State University, Title of Talk: Resisting women: Organizing in India’s garment export factories
Abstract: India ranks 6th in the global garment exports with an estimated workforce of over 2 million workers. The bedrock of this export industry, are poorly paid, migrant women and men from rural and urban areas. The industry is marked by high rate of exploitation, abusive work practices and precarious employment relations. Numerous media, NGO reports and academic research has shown how commodification and exploitation works in tandem to produce a ‘sweatshop regime’ along with a narrative of a ‘disposable third world woman worker’. Women are often perceived as impassive and a dispossessed lot without any means to resist their exploitation. What possibilities remain within this narrative to make room for everyday politics and resistances? Looking at individual and collective struggles of garment workers in two southern Indian states, this paper highlights the everyday practices of women resisting being made ‘disposable’. The paper argues that the stories of women resisting oppressions at different locations need constant retelling to disrupt the ‘capitalist processes’ whose existence depends on the myth of so called ‘disposable’ women workers. The paper tries to draw ‘contour lines’ between multiple forms of resistances drawing attention to the everyday struggles, perspectives and voices of women encountering ‘global capitalism’.
