Women's Employment - United Nations Research Institute for Social ...

Gender and employment in Moroccan textile industries
and weavers. Similarly, women workers distinguish between the
authority of the assembly line heads and that of the workshop head.
The former are closer to the women workers and they themselves
work on the sewing machines, their authority being limited to
checking the production process on the assembly line, whereas the
workshop head, who is usually a man, is responsible for the
production and behaviour of the workers. He is the confidential agent
of the factory head whose power is relayed through him and he
sometimes abuses it.
I don’t like the head of the workshop, I can’t describe him. The trouble
is he is incompetent. He doesn’t know the work, he doesn’t know
how to cut. He knows nothing. He only knows how to insult people
for the slightest reason and sometimes for no reason at all. (Woman
worker in a garment factory)
The foreman does what he wants. He treats certain women well and
others badly. There are girls whom he considers serious and their
work good and he treats them with respect. He goes after other ones
and if they do not play the game he loses his temper with them (shad
maaha dad). He looks after the one who is his girlfriend and gives
her good work to do. (Woman worker in a carpet factory)
In the carpet sector, the maalma has more authority over the
weavers than the heads of the assembly line have over the stitchers.
She has the power of recruiting and is thus always able to keep the
weavers indebted to her. Nevertheless she does not escape the
authority of the workshop head, as he can, if the quality of production
does not conform to fixed standards, destroy her whole day’s
production and make her start again.
Does the behaviour of the women workers justify such patterns
of authority and control? On what is this system of management
based? Authority is used to ensure discipline and the functioning of
the production process. For example, it is sometimes used to control
the chatting of the young women workers making garments, as this
upsets production. This is an example of the tension between cultural
norms and the exigencies of the factory. The workers want to gossip
while they work. This is part of Moroccan culture, as attested by the
popular saying “spinning talk and task” (hdith wa moughzel): one can
both chat and spin wool. To counteract this behaviour, some workshop
heads control chatting by transmitting music and putting up the
volume when necessary.
The workplace authority systems were perceived by the workers
as excessive. Women workers recount the insults that they have
received from workshop heads because of some mistake they have
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