New jobs, new spatialised patriarchy: creating factory workers in a Himalayan pharmaceutical hub

Abstract

Abstract Sikkim, one of the smallest Indian states is now one of the fastest growing pharmaceutical hubs in the country. Pharmaceutical factories are spaces where gender, technology, dependency, profit, and livelihood operate simultaneously. They represent sites of capital accumulation as well as continuous re-calibration of gender and race relationships. Pharmaceutical companies rely on local women from rural and peri-urban areas for assembly-line and other manual labour; work, which exposes them to new spatial and temporal patriarchal norms. Most importantly, these norms are enforced by migrant men who occupy a distinct and often subservient position in the local social matrix. Inside the factories, migrant men have more power and authority over the local population. Beyond the factory walls, local hill-groups assume positions of authority and control the spatial order, while the factory supervisors and technicians are reduced to a somewhat insignificant group of migrant men. Focussing on pharmaceutical factories in Sikkim, the paper will illustrate (i) how industrial labour exposes women to new temporal and spatialised patriarchy; (ii) how human resource frontiers emerge in recently industrialising borderlands; (iii) and how development creates a flux in identities and relationships between local and migrant communities.