The feminisation of labour practised by the spinning industry in Tamil Nadu in the name of the Sumangali Scheme is based on a highly exploitative labour arrangement of employing girls belonging to socio-economically deprived sections. Using a socially sensitive factory regime approach developed by Ching Kwan Lee, this article brings to light changes that are underway in a prominent mill that has been the target of NGO activism. The findings show that a highly despotic factory regime has slowly transformed into a hegemonic regime premised on the reconstruction of the employer as a benevolent patron. The study unravels the complex intersection of caste and gender in shaping the new factory regime.
AceroL., MinolitiC., RotaniaA., & VichichI.M.P. (1991). Textile workers in Brazil and Argentina: A study of the interrelationships between work and household. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.
2.
BurawoyM. (1985). The politics of production: Factory regimes under capitalism and socialism. London: Verso.
3.
LeeC.K. (1998). Gender and the South China miracle: Two worlds of factory women. Berkeley: University of California Press.
4.
NeethaN. (2002). Flexible production, feminisation and disorganisation: Evidence from Tiruppur Knitwear Industry. Economic & Political Weekly, 37(21), 2045–2052.
5.
VijayabaskarM. (2011). Global crises, welfare provision and coping strategies of labour in Tiruppur. Economic & Political Weekly, 46(22), 38–46.
6.
VijayabaskarM. (2015). Emerging spatio-technical regimes of accumulation in the globalizing south and implications for labour. In Harriss-whiteB. and HeyerJ. (Eds), Indian capitalism in development (pp. 136–152). Oxon: Routledge.
7.
WolfD. (1992). Factory daughters: Gender, household dynamics and rural industrialization in Java. Berkeley: University of California Press.
