Standing for all instances of problematic workplace sexuality, the notion of `sexual harassment' illuminates but also obscures the role of desire in work relations. It spotlights isolated individual interactions at the expense of structural processes and stresses choice and blame rather than the way in which a given workplace evokes particular sexual subjectivities in the service of production. An ethnography of shopfloor relations in a Mexican export-processing plant shows how labor control operates through the interpellation of both workers and supervisors as sexual subjects. In this plant, panoptic architecture evokes and focuses the male gaze in the service of `quality' and `efficiency', and desire emerges as a force of production. Male supervisors are located as voyeurs and young female workers as sexual objects to be consumed. Worker efficiency and desirability are conflated and workers become subject to management for the affirmation of both. In such a setting, framing shopfloor sexuality as aberrant distracts from its primary, and equally problematic, function as a shopfloor discipline.
Althusser, Louis
(1971) `Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)', in Louis Althusser Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, pp. 127-186. New York: Monthly Review Press.
2.
Benería, Lourdes
and Martha Roldan (1987) The Crossroads of Class and Gender. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
3.
Berger, John
(1972) Ways of Seeing. Middlesex: British Broadcasting Corporation.
4.
Burawoy, Michael
(1979) Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process under Monopoly Capitalism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
5.
Burawoy, Michael
(1985) The Politics of Production. New York: Verso.
6.
Chancer, Lynn
(1998) `The Beauty Context: Looks, Social Theory and Feminism', in Reconcilable Differences: Confronting Beauty, Pornography and the Future of Feminism, pp. 82-172. Berkeley: University of California Press.
7.
Elson, Diane
and Ruth Pearson (1986) `Third World Manufacturing', in Feminist Review (eds) Waged Work, pp. 67-92. London: Virago.
8.
Fernandez-Kelly, Maria Patricia
(1983) For We Are Sold, I and My People: Women and Industry in Mexico's Frontier. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
9.
Fitzgerald, L.F.
, S. Swan and K. Fischer (1997) `But Was it Really Sexual Harassment? Legal, Behavioral and Psychological Definitions of the Workplace Victimization of Women', in W. O'Donohue (ed.) Sexual Harassment: Theory, Research and Treatment. New York: Allyn and Bacon.
10.
Foucault, Michel
(1979) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.
11.
Foucault, Michel
(1980) The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. New York: Vintage Books.
12.
Fuentes, Annette
and Barbara Ehrenreich (1983) Women in the Global Factory. Boston, MA: South End Press.
13.
Gruber, James
(1998) `The Impact of Male Work Environments and Organizational Policies on Women's Experiences of Sexual Harassment', Gender and Society12(3): 301-320.
14.
Gruber, James
, Michael Smith and Kaisa Kauppinen-Toropainen (1996) `Sexual Harassment Types and Severity: Linking Research and Policy', in Margaret Stockdale (ed.) Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: Perspectives, Frontiers, and Response Strategies, pp. 151-173. London: Sage.
15.
Guiffre, Patti
and Christine Williams (1994) `Boundary Lines: Labeling Sexual Harassment in Restaurants', Gender and Society8(3): 378-401.
16.
Hanisch, Kathy
(1996) `An Integrated Framework for Studying the Outcomes of Sexual Harassment: Consequences for Individuals and Organizations', in Margaret Stockdale (ed.) Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: Perspectives, Frontiers, and Response Strategies, pp. 174-198. London: Sage.
17.
Hearn, Jeff
and Wendy Parkin (1995) `Sex at Work': The Power and Paradox of Organisation Sexuality. New York: St Martin's Press.
18.
Hollway, Wendy
and Tony Jefferson (1996) `PC or Not PC: Sexual Harassment and the Question of Ambivalence', Human Relations49(3): 373-393.
19.
Hulin, Charles
, Louise Fitzgerald and Fritz Drasgow (1996) `Organizational Influences on Sexual Harassment', in Margaret Stockdale (ed.) Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: Perspectives, Frontiers, and Response Strategies, pp. 127-150. London: Sage.
20.
Iglesias Prieto, Norma
(1987) La Flor Más Bella de la Maquiladora. Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación Pública.
21.
Kamel, Rachel
(1990) The Global Factory: Analysis and Action for a New Economic Era. Philadelphia, PA: American Friends Service Committee.
22.
Knapp, Deborah
and Gary Gustis (1996) `The Real `Disclosure': Sexual Harassment and the Bottom Line', in Margaret Stockdale (ed.) Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: Perspectives, Frontiers, and Response Strategies, pp. 199-213. London: Sage.
23.
Lauretis, Teresa de
(1987) `The Technology of Gender', in Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film and Fiction, pp. 1-30. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
24.
Loe, Meika
(1996) `Working for Men - at the Intersection of Power, Gender, and Sexuality', Sociological Inquiry66(4): 399-421.
25.
MacKinnon, Catherine
(1982) `Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: An Agenda for Theory', Signs7(3): 515-544.
26.
Mulvey, Laura
(1975) `Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', Screen16(3): 6-18.
27.
Rogers, Jackie
and Kevin Henson (1997) ` “Hey, Why Don't You Wear a Shorter Skirt?”: Structural Vulnerability and the Organization of Sexual Harassment in Temporary Clerical Employment', Gender and Society11(2): 215-237.
28.
Salzinger, Leslie
(1997) `From High Heels to Swathed Bodies: Gendered Meanings under Production in Mexico's Export-Processing Industry', Feminist Studies23(3): 549-574.
29.
Salzinger, Leslie
(forthcoming) Gender under Production: Making Subjects in Mexico's Global Factories. Berkeley: University of California Press.
30.
Sklair, Leslie
(1993) Assembling for Development: The Maquila Industry in Mexico and the United States. San Diego, CA: Center for US-Mexican Studies, UCSD.
31.
Snitow, Ann
, Christine Stansell and Sharon Thompson (eds) (1983) Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality. New York: Monthly Review Press.
32.
Standing, Guy
(1989) `Global Feminization through Flexible Labor', World Development17: 1077-1095.
33.
Steele, Valerie
(1985) Fashion and Eroticism: Ideals of Feminine Beauty from the Victorian Era to the Jazz Age. New York: Oxford University Press.
34.
Stockdale, Margaret
(ed.) (1996a) Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: Perspectives, Frontiers, and Response Strategies. London: Sage.
35.
Stockdale, Margaret
(1996b) `What We Know and What We Need to Learn about Sexual Harassment', in Margaret Stockdale (ed.) Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: Perspectives, Frontiers, and Response Strategies, pp. 3-25.
Welsh, Sandy
(1999) `Gender and Sexual Harassment', Annual Review of Sociology25: 169-190.
38.
Williams, Christine
(1997) `Sexual Harassment in Organizations: A Critique of Current Research and Policy', Sexuality and Culture1: 19-43.
39.
Williams, Christine
, Patti Guiffre and Kirsten Dellinger (1999) `Sexuality in the Workplace: Organizational Control, Sexual Harassment, and the Pursuit of Pleasure', Annual Review of Sociology25: 73-93.
40.
Yelvington, Kevin
(1996) `Flirting in the Factory', The Journal of Royal Anthropology2(2): 313-333.
