Rationality and Identity in the Participation Choices of Female Maquila Workers

Abstract

Under the significant structural obstacles to labor mobilization in market economies and the male domination of labor federations, what motivates female export-processing zone (EPZ) workers to participate in labor organization? Why do female workers participate in traditional laborunions or alternative women’s organizations that similarly claim to represent them?This article addresses these questions using original survey data from female EPZ workers in the garment industries of Honduras and Nicaragua. The author applies insights fromrational choicetheory and identity approaches and examines howgender and class influence femaleworkers’organizing in Central American EPZs. Logistic and ordinal logistic regression estimates show that this group of workers participates in labor organizations because of not individual selective incentives but rather aspects of identity formation. The survey data illustrate that shared interests cannot be assumed for similarly situated popular subjects who experience the multiple facets of their conditions in different ways.

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