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Gender, Textile Work, and Tunisian Women’s Liberation

Deviating Patterns

  • Elucidates women’s varied strategies for contending with exploitation, from emphasized femininity to female masculinity
  • Promotes new understandings of women’s and men’s place in rapidly neoliberalizing MENA economies
  • Challenges oversimplified representations of Muslim women and men

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Table of contents (5 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
  2. The Paradoxes of Tunisian Women’s Liberation

    • Claire Oueslati-Porter
    Pages 1-14
  3. Fieldwork and Family

    • Claire Oueslati-Porter
    Pages 15-40
  4. Producing Factory Femininity

    • Claire Oueslati-Porter
    Pages 41-62
  5. Producing Men and Masculinity in the Factory

    • Claire Oueslati-Porter
    Pages 63-79
  6. Female Masculinity in the Factory

    • Claire Oueslati-Porter
    Pages 81-104
  7. Back Matter

    Pages 105-110

About this book

In this book, author Claire Oueslati-Porter describes her field research  in Binzart, Tunisia's sprawling factory zone and in the surrounding city. She blends conventional ethnography with auto-ethnography, leading readers inside a textile factory, among the women and men workers who navigate intensely gendered labor. While there is pressure to adhere to gendered codes of behavior in the factory, some women engage in subversive gender performances. Oueslati-Porter elucidates a phenomenon that is oft-neglected in studies of women in the Middle East and North Africa: gender-queerness. Further, Oueslati-Porter explores her own perceptions of being a researcher while also being a daughter-in-law in a Tunisian family, and a mother to a toddler-aged son while conducting field work. This ethnography centralizes women's waged and unwaged labor in the understanding of women’s rights



Gender, Textile Work, and Tunisian Women’s Liberation will be of interest to students and
scholars of anthropology, sociology, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, LGBTQ+ studies,
and Middle East and North Africa studies.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Anthropology, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, University of Miami, Coral Gables, USA

    Claire Oueslati-Porter

About the author

Claire Oueslati-Porter is Senior Lecturer, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Anthropology, University of Miami, USA. 

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Gender, Textile Work, and Tunisian Women’s Liberation

  • Book Subtitle: Deviating Patterns

  • Authors: Claire Oueslati-Porter

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24104-9

  • Publisher: Palgrave Pivot Cham

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-24103-2Published: 26 September 2019

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-24104-9Published: 14 September 2019

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: IX, 110

  • Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Gender Studies, Ethnography, Sociology of Work, Feminist Anthropology

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 44.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 59.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access