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Gender Eclipsed? Racial Hierarchies in Transnational Call Center Work

This article explores the ways in which call center workers in India do telephone service work across national borders. Call center work is in many ways the epitome of what is commonly seen as “women’s work.” Interviews conducted in New Delhi, India, revealed, however, that managers, trainers, and workers talk about their work as gender desegregated. By situating call center work within gendered economic relations, the author explores the ways in which women and men talk about their performances of gender, which are situated within racialized encounters between the Indian workers and the U.S. clients they serve.

globalization, call centers in India, female employment, gender segregation in worker-client relations

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 32, No. 4 (2005): 105-119