Gender, Textile Work, and Tunisian Women’s Liberation: Deviating Patterns (1st ed. 2020)

By: Claire Oueslati-Porter

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Synopsis: This book presents ethnographic research conducted in an export zone textile factory in Binzart, Tunisia during the years leading up to the Arab Spring. The author focuses on the sexist management tactics in the factory, as well as women workers’ patterns of resistance and capitulation to sexual objectification and exploitation. Masculinity as enacted by men and by some women is revealed as fundamental to the processes of production. Certain women workers, Oueslati-Porter shows, challenge cisgender norms by appropriating masculinity for themselves, threatening men’s masculine supremacy. Furthermore, socio-cultural surveillance mechanisms in the factory and in the family is curtail the tensions posed by the presence of masculine women.Gender, Textile Work, and Tunisian Women’s Liberation will be of interest to students andscholars of anthropology, sociology, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, LGBTQ+ studies,and Middle East and North Africa studies.