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Dr Ayşe Arslan holds a PhD in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She was awarded the 2020 British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) Leigh Douglas Memorial Prize and the 2019 Turkish Social Sciences Association Young Social Scientist Award for her PhD thesis. Her research interests focus on class, gender, reproductive labour, informalisation and feminisation of labour, working class organisation, the everyday and Turkey’s political economy.

For issue #56 of The Internationalist, she sits down to discuss her most recent book, Women’s Productive and Reproductive Labour: Class and Gender Inequalities in Turkey. Dr Arslan explores the intertwining of the AKP's gender politics and neoliberal policies, the need for working-class organizations to counter competitive dynamics among garment workers, and highlights the exploitation of a "women's reserve army of reproductive labour," emphasizing the need for a comprehensive approach to labour struggles.

Tanya: In your analysis of the AKP's (Justice and Development Party or Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) gender politics and its intertwining with labour policies, you've highlighted the party's promotion of conservative values and pro-natalist policies. These measures seem to reinforce traditional gender roles and place a significant burden on women for unpaid reproductive labour. How do you see these policies intersecting with and potentially perpetuating the neoliberal economic agenda in Turkey, and what are the broader societal implications of this co-constitutive relationship between gender politics and economic policies?

Ayşe: The AKP’s conservative-religious gender politics is strongly informed by its neoliberal agenda. Although the neoliberal economic ideology is not the sole determinant, it is a very important one. First, it legitimises the government policies towards the informalisation of women’s labour. We know that the informalisation of labour is one of the key neoliberal policies worldwide. It allows employers to decrease the cost of labour and strengthen labour control mechanisms. In Turkey, by reinforcing patriarchal gender roles that associate women with the domestic sphere and depict motherhood as women’s most important role, the AKP legitimises informal and insecure forms of women’s employment. From a neoliberal-patriarchal state ideology, flexible employment allows women to harmonise family and work life. Through flexible, precarious employment, women are expected to carry out paid productive and unpaid reproductive work together in the most efficient way.

There is a more specific economic implication of the AKP’s pro-natalist politics: enlarging the reserve army of labour. As it already appears in Marx’s writings, the larger the reserve army of labour, the better it is for the bourgeoisie, as it decreases labour wages and allows for harsher labour discipline.

Lastly, the AKP’s patriarchal gender politics is deeply related to its neoliberal agenda in terms of the neoliberal crisis of social reproduction. Neoliberalism is characterised by the commodification of almost everything, the reduction of state provision of social services and poorer work conditions. We face a crisis of social reproduction in the world, which has become more crystallised during the COVID-19 pandemic. The AKP’s gender politics that naturalise and reinforce the appropriation of women’s unpaid reproductive labour in the family should also be seen as a response to this crisis. The gap resulting from the state’s withdrawal is filled with a larger amount of women’s unpaid labour in the family. We see this in the care-at-home policies that predominantly target the women in the family. These policies cause a further feminisation of unwaged care work in the family.

Tanya: In light of the multifaceted factors that shape intra-class and intra-gender relationships among garment workers, as well as the dynamics of solidarity and conflict within the workplace, how might these insights inform broader discussions on the potential for collective action and social change within the context of the garment industry and similar labour-intensive sectors?

Ayşe: It is no surprise that workers’ intra-class relations are composed of both solidarity and conflict.  But, we need to look closely at the dynamics of conflict and solidarity to grasp better and ameliorate the condition of the working class in this neoliberal right-wing system. As you know, in my research, I focus on garment workers, and I worked as a garment worker to better understand the intricate, complex social relations on the shop floor. The first thing I should say is that the relations among workers in general, and women workers in particular, are strongly shaped by neoliberal, patriarchal ideologies. The neoliberal garment labour regime, which is characterised by job insecurity, strict labour discipline, poor working conditions and the lack of organised class power, forces workers to compete with each other in order to secure their jobs and better their working conditions at the expense of fellow workers.

In the case of women workers, the neoliberal labour regime entangled with patriarchal ideologies further damages women workers’ intra-gender relations. In the book, you can see various manifestations of the infusion of the neoliberal-patriarchal hegemony into the workers’ relations. I think the harsher the labour regime in terms of material work conditions and labour discipline, as is the case in labour-intensive sectors such as the garment sector, the worse the intra-class relations are.

But, as I show, there are also acts of solidarity and everyday forms of resistance on the shop floor. For example, garment factory workers sometimes act together against managerial domination to support their fellow workers or to circumvent management attempts to increase the expenditure of labour in production. Some women stand with their women colleagues against sexual harassment, some help each other in their work, or they support each other on non-work-related issues such as marriage, death and illness. Also, my findings are from the garment workplaces with no organised class and feminist struggle, which unfortunately represent the majority of garment workplaces.

To better the intra-class and intra-gender relations on the shop floor, we need more working-class organisations and collective actions against the neoliberal, patriarchal labour regimes. It is only in this way that workers’ identities, such as ethnicity, gender, sexuality or religion, stop being a tool in the hands of the employer and management to reinforce individual competitiveness among workers and become a tool in the hands of workers and activists to strengthen labour and feminist solidarity.

Tanya: In your book, you examine the concept of the "women's reserve army of reproductive labour" and the pivotal role played by women relatives, neighbours, and extended family members in enabling women garment workers to participate in waged work. What broader implications might this phenomenon hold for our understanding of gendered labour, societal support networks, and the exploitation of unpaid reproductive labour on a larger social scale?

Ayşe: During my fieldwork, I observed a female support network around almost all women garment workers. It is usually the unwaged reproductive labour of women workers’ women relatives, friends and neighbours which enables them, especially those married with children, to work in the garment sector. 

As wages in the garment sector are too low to afford to pay for housework and care work, women need to delegate their reproductive responsibilities, especially care responsibilities, to other women, primarily mothers, mothers-in-law, sisters and daughters, and sometimes neighbours and friends. This is what I conceptualise as “women’s reserve army of reproductive labour”. In this sense, the exploitation of women’s productive labour in the garment sector depends on the exploitation of women’s unpaid reproductive labour on a larger scale. This applies to almost all sectors, but especially to those which are characterised by high labour informality and poor work conditions. This prompts us to reconsider the traditional understandings of the working class and labour struggle. Today, as emphasised by many Marxist-feminist scholars, we need a comprehensive analytical and political understanding which rejects the hierarchy between waged labour and unwaged labour. As capitalist exploitation and oppression take place on a larger social scale beyond the production sphere, so must the struggle against it.

Tanya: In your book, you also shed light on the employment of Syrian refugees, including child labour, in Turkey's garment industry. This not only touches upon the economic aspects but also delves into the humanitarian and ethical dimensions of the industry. Could you elaborate, for our readers, on how the exploitation of Syrian refugees and children in the garment sector reflects broader issues of labour rights, social justice, and international responsibility? 

Ayşe: The garment industry is characterised by high informality and serious labour rights violations. It has a complex and fragmented production structure, with massive production chains starting with buying companies and ending with home-based workers. And within this structure, garment employers, seeking maximum profit at minimum cost, benefit from social hierarchies by employing socially disadvantageous groups at lower costs. Syrian refugees and children are one of the primary sources of informal, cheap labour in the Turkish garment sector. In the case of the former, their employment is almost always unregistered; in the case of the latter, it is illegal. Moreover, most of the child workers in the sector are Syrian. These workers are mostly concentrated in small-scale sweatshop production, as these sweatshops usually operate informally and are not audited. 

We can talk about the impact of the codes of conduct, which the international brands expect their suppliers to adopt, on relatively better work conditions in export factories –– it is one of the main reasons why we are less likely to see unregistered Syrians and children in those factories. But, as I said, there is a massive subcontracting chain: export factories outsource their work, with no legal contract, to several small-scale sweatshops which employ Syrians and children illegally. Thus, we can talk about a significant number of Syrians and children in sweatshops producing for big Western brands. 

As you say, this entails serious humanitarian and ethical considerations and has received a significant deal of international media attention. However, these brands’ typical response to the media coverage is to cut ties with the producers to avoid damage to their reputations, and the problem continues to persist. 

To solve the problem, we need to see the real structural reasons behind it: it is the neoliberal capitalist production and labour regime that is built upon extracting maximum surplus value from workers with minimum costs and impoverishes (migrant) working-class families to such an extent that they are dependent on their children’s income to survive. It is the global capitalist classes and their institutions that construct Global South countries such as Turkey as the paradise of cheap labour. It is the big companies themselves that create work conditions that lead to violations of labour rights. Therefore, we need an honest, class-based and international attitude to deal with the problem of labour rights violations, social injustice and inequalities. All the actors, including governments, companies and international institutions, should see their role in it and act accordingly. But most importantly, we should create the conditions necessary for the organisation and empowerment of workers to raise their voices and lead social change in their own interests.

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