Covert resistance beyond #Metoo: mobile practices of marginalized migrant women to negotiate sexual harassment in the workplace

Abstract

Transcending the #MeToo movement, our study gives voice to socially marginalized women from the Global South. We investigate the largely invisible digitally-mediated negotiation of sexual harassment experiences by rural-urban migrant Chinese women (n=41) in their workplaces. An intersectionality lens reveals nuances in comparing the impact of mobile communication practices in the contextualized intersection of gender, class, and the organizational structure across informal and formal economies. Women in the informal labor market were likely to engage in bottom-up disruption of a prevailing male-dominant economic system by using mobiles to establish collaborative groups for job information sharing while resisting male intermediation. Women in a registered factory, in contrast, engaged in the topdown transformation of patriarchal culture. Female managers, in newly gained leadership roles, used their professional authority to encourage ordinary female workers to re-shape the discursive gender power of mobile spaces shared with male workers. Our study presents a variety of complex, dynamic, and strategic mobile practices enacted by marginalized female populations against sexual harassment occurring in the Global South. We reflect on digitized female resistant culture as part of broader societal change.

Labour Trajectories and Aspirations of Nepali ‘Adult Entertainment Sector’ Workers

“…Waitresses all over the world have long complained about sexual harassment (Gilbert, Guerrier and Guy 1998;Ram 2018;Poulston 2008). Abuses in entertainment are also well documented, and the #MeToo movement and efforts from women in the global South have aptly illustrated the severity and frequency of the problems (Hillstrom 2018;Pei, Chib and Ling 2021). These sectors may account for the majority of reports about labour abuse, exploitation, and human trafficking -mostly of women and girls.…”

Subverted agency: The dilemmas of disempowerment in digital practices

“…In this context, another possible axis of marginalization observed is age. In other contexts, other axes such as class have been found to be salient along with gender (Pei et al, 2021). We thus reiterate the call to not consider transfeminine individuals monolithically but to attend to localized manifestations of intersectional oppression.…”

Contributions to reducing online gender harassment: Social re-norming and appealing to empathy as tried-and-failed techniques

“…Collective forms of online resistance have also been found by Pei et al (2021), for example, when women intervene and confront men who are sexually harassing other women users on group chats. In this vein, satire is another tool that can be collectively weaponised by women (Ringrose & Lawrence, 2018).…”