Gendered Struggles against Globalisation in Mexico

Teresa Healy, Ashgate 2008

 

An examination of how working class men battled employers and masculinized political power to maintain their livelihoods and resist the feminization of their work and their own identities.

Ashgate e-sales to Libraries The book is also available elecronically and the reference  number of the E-version of this book is  978-0-7546-9077-1

 

Reviews:

Teresa Healy, Gendered Struggles Against Globalisation in Mexico (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008)

 

“…an innovating contribution to the literature on globalization. It successfully combines explanation of the broader political and economic factors in Mexico‟s recent history with case studies of workers‟ struggles at critical points in the introduction of change. The underlying theme is the erosion of traditional social relations without replacing them by an alternative sense of social cohesion.”

Robert W. Cox, York University, Canada

 

“Healy gives us a new interpretation of workers’ struggles in twentieth-century Mexico. Using a gender analysis that focuses on ‘hierarchies of masculinities’ to understand male workers’ resistance to union leaders, employers, and the state, her approach is layered, provocative, and fresh. This book is a must-read for students of Mexican history, labor, gender studies, and globalization.”

Maria Lorena Cook, Cornell University, USA

 

“…an important contribution to a critical understanding of restructuring in the auto industry in Mexico. Healy has created a new tool for feminist analysis by demonstrating how conflicts over history between different hierarchies of men served to undermine democracy in workers’ organizations and community groups, so that restructuring occurred at their expense. It is refreshing to observe this process in the voices and experiences of workers themselves.”

Kathryn Kopinak, University of Western Ontario, Canada

 

“Teresa Healy’s pioneering study…is a pivotal work because it investigates and seeks to explain the feminized nature of so much industrial production in the country – particularly on its northern border – in the era of NAFTA and free trade. In so doing, it exposes the truly cynical nature of capitalist restructuring in Mexico behind such anodyne slogans as commercial “liberalization”…it is an eye-opening introduction to the little-examined links between gender and economic change.”

Latin American Review of Books

 

“In using masculinity to re-read “Revolutionary Nationalist” Constitutional rhetoric, Healy is nothing short of brilliant. She reveals gendered contradictions and also mobilizes support for her claim that caudillo masculinity is hegemonic in Mexico. While the worker-father and the caudillo are two central ideal types in her analysis, Healy is careful to avoid binary oppositional concepts; instead she steers her readers to consider a spectrum of masculine identifications within the “condition of hegemony”… In the same vein, Healy‟s analytical approach of exploring gendered competitions among men and groups of men is a welcome and innovative technique for exploring the power geometries of globalization and regional economic integration in NAFTA-space or elsewhere.”

Journal of Latin American Geography

 

“The book’s contribution to labour studies is that it offers three well-researched case studies of labour organising in the Nissan, Ford and Volkswagen auto plants in Mexico. The author has conducted in-depth interviews, covers the relevant secondary literature on labour in Mexico and provides translations of material otherwise only available in Spanish. She also offers an overview of Mexican politics and economic restructuring from the 1960s to the 1990s, making it a useful tool for students of labour studies and Mexican history.”

Gender & History

 

“…a fascinating journey into the recent history of Mexico, that will resonate with histories of the union movement globally.”

Gender and Development

 

“What Healy brings to this well studied region is an analysis of the male factory worker. She argues that working-class men have been just as enmeshed within gendered social relations as women. Expanding her analysis beyond the usual class argument dominant within labour studies, Healy identifies prescribed notions of masculinity within Mexican culture as one of the central foundations for its modern economic structure….Healy‟s work is exactly what is needed to fully address the complexity of the new global order. One can only hope that more such analyses will develop.”

Labour / Le Travail