Doctoral Dissertation Research: Conceptualizing Skill: Female Supervisors in the Mexican Maquiladora Industry

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9406130 SCHOENBERGER This research examines how technological change and the reorganization of production paradigms in multinational companies affect the vertical mobility of women workers in these facilities. Recent scholarship on changes in firm production strategies, worker-management relations, and on the training of "skilled labor" suggest that the positions held by Third World women in such facilities may not be as static as previously expected. The proposed research investigates how women in "unskilled" jobs in the "global assembly line" have acquired the "skills" qualifying them for promotion into supervisory positions. Central to the study is the way that skilled labor comes to be defined and recognized at the workplace across industries and within several factories. This research will examine how new requirements for production and renovated technologies alter the roles played by Third World workers in multinational production facilities in situ. To do this, the investigators will study the emergence of Mexican female supervisors within multinational operations in Ciudad Juarez, which is one of Mexico's largest export processing zones. Portions of this proposal are derived from preliminary research conducted in Mexico in 1992. The proposed research focuses on the use of both questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with workers, supervisors, and managers at selected plants of multinational firms located in Ciudad Juarez. This project will provide important new insights into the understanding of the ways in which multinational firms interact with the local population in industrializing areas with an emphasis on how gender relations both constitute part of the structure of the organization of manufacturing and, in turn, are redefined because of the presence of the multinational firms. As a doctoral dissertation research improvement award, this project will also provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong indep endent research career. ***