Preliminary Programme

This paper will investigate the relationship that exists between deindustrialisation and precarious work in Italy over the past 70 years, adopting a gender standpoint. Since 1945 three main phases of de-industrialisation can be identified in the Italian context: the early 1950s, due to post-war economic recovery, the late 1970s - early 1980s as a consequence of 1970s crisis, and the past few years due to 2008 global economic crisis. Gender dynamics within de-industrialisation processes have not been adequately analyzed, in spite of the different paths followed by female and male workers as a consequence of de-industrialisation. Precarious work prevalently affected female workers expelled from factories, who were often unable to find any other regular job and were obliged to accept casualised working arrangements. Furthermore, the importance played by women as agents of resistance to de-industrialisation has not yet been fully acknowledged. Notwithstanding the important role played by female factory workers in raising public awareness and fighting against factory closures, the narratives related to de-industrialisation are highly masculinised.
The paper will analyse three main case studies of deindustrialisation, occurring in the 1950s, the 1980s and the 2010s involving highly feminised factories located in the Bologna area: the engineering factory Ducati, a well-known motorbike manufacturer which at the beginning of 1950s was highly feminised and had expelled more than 600 women during a restructuring process. The second case concerns the clothing factory Pancaldi, which in the 1980s underwent a process of restructuring leading up to the factory closure. The third case regards the lingerie factory La Perla, which in the 2010s was involved in a process of restructuring leading to the dismissal and/or laying off of hundreds of female workers, who were engaged in a tussle with the management to save the factory itself. Thanks to archival materials, contemporary press reports, artistic materials, oral and literary sources (i.e. memories, autobiographies), this paper will explore the role played by women’s agency in the struggle against deindustrialisation, women’s career paths in the wake of factory closures or the dismissals, working arrangements and precarious work resulting from the process of deindustrialisation. (Show less)

The paper will explore the gendered effects of deindustrialisation in the post-socialist, post-Yugoslav context of Croatia, discussing the specificities of deindustrialisation in post-socialist South Eastern Europe. The traditionally feminised garment industry thrived during Yugoslav times, becoming a gendered symbol of industrialisation, consumption and socialist modernity. After the break-up of Yugoslavia, however, processes of privatisation and deindustrialisation deeply affected the textile sector, leading to factory closures, precarious work and unemployment. The closing and bankruptcy of several factories in post-Yugoslav states was deeply entangled with processes of state dissolution, corruption and economic pillage of socially owned industrial property. Textile workers’ loss of social rights, job security and purchasing power also entailed the devaluation of women’s labour, and an increase in precarious labour arrangements and informal work, contributing to the process of re-traditionalisation of gender relations across the region. The paper will present the first results of my current post-doc project, titled Weaving socialism: an oral history of the garment industry in Croatia, from post-war industrialisation to post-socialist deindustrialisation, which is based on oral history interviews with former employees of three recently deindustrialised textile factories (Arena in Pula, Kamensko in Zagreb and Varteks in Varaždin). On the basis of workers’ narratives of industrialisation, deindustrialisation, socialism and post-socialism, I will investigate feelings of loss, nostalgia and belonging, as well as workers’ multiple forms of resilience when confronted with unexpected shifts in their everyday lives. (Show less)

This paper examines the experiences of female factory workers who were forced to move as their company reduced its workforce, closed factories and eventually went bust at the end of the twentieth century. While taking a cue from discussions of 'the displaced worker' in studies of desindustrialisation in North America (e.g. High 2003), the paper focuses on the case of the iconic French domestic appliance company Moulinex, which was based in Lower Normandy and surrounding areas. A feature of the Moulinex workforce was that many of those who worked on the shop floor were women who had grown up locally, been hired in the years of expansion before 1975 and remained with the company until their factories closed in the period 1997-2001. To a much greater extent than their mothers' generation (in what had been a predominantly rural area), these women had had to reconcile their identities as 'ouvrières' (female workers) with familial roles and identities (such as wife and mother). Drawing on oral history, as well as printed and audiovisual materials, this paper will explore how these gender and class identities were rendered precarious and/or reconstructed through the experience of displacement. We will ask: How was displacement gendered, in both its professional and domestic implications? How did transfer to another site affect relationships among women at work? Given that each Moulinex factory produced different appliances and that women workers often identified strongly with their own site and product, how were identities affected when both workers, and in some cases, products, moved. (Show less)