Workers´mobilization, labour process and sexual division of labour in the electronics sector in the context of productive flexibility

Abstract

The aim of this research project is to connect the productive restructuring and technological innovation processes in Brazil to the sexual division of labour approach. The analysis is based on a case study in the electronics sector. The plant is a transnational located in a city near São Paulo City and employs a large number of women as the workforce. Furthermore, it holds a prominent role worldwide and has been keeping a market leadership in Brazil since the 2000s by manufacturing cell phones, computers and other electronic equipment. The project aims to discuss and analyze the main characteristics of the labour process, as well as the working conditions, the job qualification issue and the forms of management control upon the workers, with special attention to the female ones. Workforce mobilization in a gender perspective is a relevant theme of research in the area of studies and it will be mainly addressed in this project. The latter seeks to bring new elements to the flexibility's debate, paying special attention to possible elements of social transformation that have been proceeding since the 1980s, when it firstly come to the front. Although changes have been taking place since then either on forms of productive organization and on the sexual division of labor, it is also possible to identify, thanked to the first findings coming from previous fieldwork experiments already done, a noticeable permanence concerning the women's role into the labour process. Management strategies taking into account the sex of the worker are still at work in Brazilian factories today. The research intends to raise the point to what extent both the productive organization and the sexual division of labor (be it modified, reinforced or adapted) influence the reproduction of social relations of class and gender jointly, as well as the possibility of their transformation. The analysis will be developed through semi-directive interviews, direct observation, document analysis and literature review. As theoretical references, authors who emphasize work, gender and race-ethnicity as crosscut issues will be mobilized along the research. (AU)