Beyond the Firm: Restructuring Gender Divisions of Labor in Quito's Garment Industry under Austerity

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Abstract
In this study I investigate social adjustments emerging under neoliberal austerity policies in Ecuador. In particular, I focus on the processes of informalization and feminization of garment manufacture as Ecuadorian producers attempt to remain viable in a radically opened economy. A central premise of this study is that gendered labor supplies in places are significant to the form that industry restructuring assumes. The analysis draws on extensive fieldwork and builds a political economy of industrial development, debt crisis, and austerity to uncover those forces which have combined in place to restructure gender divisions of labor in paid work and households in the early 1990s. This is coupled with analysis of in-depth interviews with women informal garment workers in order to understand the diverse constructions of informal work, gender divisions of labor, and daily life that are emerging under austerity. This involves an examination of the ways in which gender roles and relations are being reworked for these women and their families through informal wage-earning activity. This moves the analysis beyond representations of women as uniformly subordinated by industrial capitalism and towards an appreciation of the mutual reworkings of employment relations and gender identities.