Women's shop floor militancy and empowerment: Industrial dispute in an automotive factory in Turkey

This article describes a two-day-long industrial action during the struggle for unionization at Mata Automotive Factory located in Istanbul Free Trade Zone in which women workers actively marched, joined the slowdown strike and factory occupation. The outcome after almost 6 months was the collective agreement signed on the July 25, 2016. The focus of this study is the militancy and participation of women workers during this protracted struggle process with a particular attention to the period from the slowdown strike to the collective agreement concluded between the authorized trade union-Birlesik Metal-Is (United Metalworkers' Union)-and the company. The research, which is based on semistructured interviews conducted with 16 women workers, questions to what extent the women who participated in the strike at Mata recognize that being a woman made a difference to themselves, each other, and the outcome of the strike. Although the study focuses on the gender of the participants in the action, the demands that triggered these actions were not related to the sex-based division of labor or gender relations at work. Nevertheless, the article argues that the action itself and the unionization limited sex-based division of labor at the factory and that women workers operationalize womanhood according to the relations of exploitation at the factory and the solidarity relations among workers.