Untidy Gender takes readers into the interconnected worlds of
Turkish maids and the women who employ them, tracing the
incorporation of rural migrant women into the interiors of the
domestic spheres of the urban middle classes. Firmly grounded in
data collected through a representative survey of 160 domestic
workers, in-depth interviews, and participant observation in the
kinship-based communities of domestic workers, this book forges a
new understanding of the complex interaction between gender and
class subordination.
Ozyegin traces the lives of two kinds of workers: those from the
squatter settlements who work in a number of locations, and those
who live with husbands employed as "doorkeepers" or building
superintendents in the basements of middle-class apartment
buildings. In a literal "upstairs, downstairs" arrangement, the
latter women sometimes take on apartment cleaning for clients in
the building.
At the center of the book are a number of ironies about
patriarchy. On the surface, husbands have absolute control over
whether or not their wives work, but some women work in secret, and
those "doorkeeper" husbands who allow their wives to work often
provide child care themselves. Ironically, the very constraints on
the spatial and social mobility of the women creates a labor market
in which domestic workers' labor is expensive and not readily
forthcoming, which, in turn, gives them a degree of power in
negotiating their relationship with their middle-class
employers.
Untidy Gender offers insights not only into the gender and class
dynamics of Turkish society, but contributes to the refinement of
central terms of feminist scholarship and research on work in the
informal sector,cross-class relations between women, gender and
class inequality, and women's experiences of modernity and
urbanization. The author ends with a personal account of her own
difficulties with the class tensions of the maid-employer
relationship.
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