The Global Labour Speakers Series will present a talk on “Feminization of Labour and Immaterial Labour in Turkey” with Esra Sarioglu, assistant professor in the Gender Studies Division, Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Ankara University, Turkey.
The event, taking place June 15 from 1 to 2:30pm in Ross S701, will examine uncharted dynamics of feminization of labour in Turkey in the context of globalization.
Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork on saleswomen in Istanbul, Sarioglu will highlight how gendered dynamics of immaterial labour in Turkey’s service-based economy has prompted a change in working class subjectivities, as well as gendered organization of the workplace.
To better identify these changes, Sarioglu employs the concept of the cultural politics of aesthetics and sexuality at work. The cultural politics of aesthetics builds on and extends the notion of aesthetic labour, which points out that immaterial labour is intimately linked to worker’s habitus.
Cultural politics of sexuality, on the other hand, refers to the gendered organization of work which is embedded with particular meanings and norms of sexualized behavior, gendered interactions, and even language forms emerging from the workplace. The concept of the cultural politics of aesthetics and sexuality allow us to examine not only the feminine working class subjectivities – tied to a particular habitus, emerging with the expansion of the service economy – but also the new cultural politics of sexuality at the workplace in Turkey under global restructuring.
Sarioglu received her PhD in sociology at SUNY-Binghamton and is currently an assistant professor in the Gender Studies Division, in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Ankara University, Turkey. Her primary research areas are gender and labour in global era, and she is particularly interested in examining how the global economy interacts with social constructions of gender and gender hierarchies.
Sarioglu’s ethnographic research projects focus on Turkey, where women’s labour force participation rates are low by international standards, even when compared to other countries at similar levels of economic development, engaging with the literature on the feminization of labour. These projects have focused in particular on working class women, such as home-based workers and saleswomen in relation to questions of the cultural politics of sexuality and aesthetics at work as well as the constitution of self and subjectivity at the intersection of class and gender. Her scholarly articles have been published in Gender, Work & Organization and Women’s Studies International Forum.
Refreshments will be served, and all are welcome to attend. For more visit the Facebook event page.
The Global Labour Speakers Series at York University is a collaboration of the Global Labour Research Centre, the Work & Labour Studies Program, the Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy, and the Canada Research Chair in the Political Economy of Gender & Work.
The event is co-sponsored by York University’s Departments of Social Science, Sociology, Geography, Equity Studies, and Political Science, the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, the Office of the Dean LA&PS, Osgoode Hall Law School, and the Office of the Provost.
For more about the Global Labour Research Centre, visit www.yorku.ca/glrc.