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Working the Night Shift: Women in India’s Call Center Industry
Reena Patel
Price
1170.00
ISBN
9788125042655
Language
English
Pages
204
Format
Paperback
Dimensions
158 x 240 mm
Year of Publishing
2011
Territorial Rights
Restricted
Imprint
Orient BlackSwan

Relatively high wages and the opportunity to be part of an upscale, globalized work environment draw many to the call center industry in India. At the same time, night shift employment presents women, in particular, with new challenges alongside the opportunities. This book explores how beliefs about what constitutes “women's work” are evolving in response to globalization.

Working the Night Shift is the first in-depth study of the call center industry that is written from the point of view of women workers. It uncovers how call center employment affects their lives, mainly as it relates to the anxiety that Indian families and Indian society have towards women going out at night, earning a good salary, and being exposed to western culture. This timely account illustrates the ironic and, at times, unsettling experiences of women who enter the spaces and places made accessible through call center work.

Reena Patel is a feminist scholar and currently serves as a Foreign Service officer with the US Department of State. She also advises companies on gender issues in the workplace.
Acknowledgments
  1. Introduction
  2. Off-Shoring Customer Service: A New Global Order
  3. Mobility–Morality Narratives
  4. Traveling at Night
  5. Fast Money, Family Survival, and the Consumer Class
  6. On the Home Front
  7. Social Mobility: Other Openings and Constrictions
  8. Conclusion
Postscript
Appendix
Notes
References
Index

“. . . a delightful reading on women’s mobility-morality question in the fast evolving technologies of information in western India. It questions conventional assumptions on women’s night work in its multi-dimensional, institutional and regulatory context.”

- Govind Kelkar, UN Women South Asia Regional Office, New Delhi

“. . . a simple, lucid and   analytically rich account of women’s work and life . . . in call centres. The complexities of ‘empowerment’ of women professionals in a patriarchal society are unleashed through the debates on gendered mobility and spatial access. [M]erits attention from both serious researchers and readers concerned with social and developmental issues.”

- Neetha N., Senior Fellow, Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi

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