Organizational Hierarchy, Deprived Masculinity, and Confrontational Practices: Men Doing Women’s Jobs in a Global Factory

Abstract

Based on an interactionist approach, this article examines how men workers negotiate the doing of factory jobs conventionally considered as those suited for young women and defend their masculinity in harsh and contested organizational environments. Data collected during a 15-month-long ethnography of a large global factory in South China reveal that in an oppressive institutional setting that involves coercive management, devaluation of men labor, and the lack of a family wage, men workers defend their masculinity through offensive language, flirting and sexual harassment, as well as physical violence. In doing so, they develop a rebellious identity, diaomao, both to address themselves and to curse others, as a way to resist their low status, reconstruct their own understanding of the power hierarchy, and consequently, defend their deprived masculinities. This article asserts the critical role of daily interpersonal interaction in gender practices as well as in labor process.