Gender and the limits of industrial discipline: Textile work in Medellin, Colombia, 1905-1960

Focussing on workers' experiences in Medellin's textile mills, this dissertation is a case study of the way ideologies of sexual difference were manipulated, as well as contested, in the creation of industrial work-places.;Using interviews with retired workers, government and factory archives, and statistics on mobility and disciplinary actions gleaned from personnel files, the dissertation analyzes the role of gender in shop-floor relations. Oral history provides rich material not only about workers' relations with managers, but also about the daily patterns of sociability (including fighting and flirting) that shaped their relationships to one another. Throughout, workers' memories are treated as creative narratives, with attention paid to the often contradictory ways that women and men tell stories about sexuality and insubordination at work.;Two initial chapters describe the years before about 1935, when factory jobs were easy to get and indiscipline marked the city's industrial work-places. The paternalistic discipline for which Medellin's mills later became famous was applied only after a series of strikes and only because of the unceasing efforts of Catholic reformers.;The bulk of the dissertation examines the 1940s, when young women formed the majority of the textile work-force and factory managers grafted Catholic norms of sexual behavior and female purity on to the disciplinary model of the factory. The city's largest mills made virginity an explicit prerequisite for employment, as they did not employ married women, unmarried mothers, or women of "loose morals." Flirting and "immoral" language were grounds for suspension, and a pregnancy or an abortion--if discovered--meant immediate dismissal. Yet workers contravened the factories' rules in myriad ways--from swearing in public to having abortions to lying about sexual relationships to going out on strike. By documenting not only the struggle over rules but also the emotional complexity of women's and men's interaction at work, the dissertation attempts a re-examination of a conceptual dichotomy central to social history, that of accommodation and resistance.