We are family: Women's labor mobilization and gender norms in Turkey

This paper studies factory regimes and women workers' self-identifications in two textile factories in Turkey. Based on interviews with women workers, managers, and local union leaders, it traces the circulation of metaphors of family inside the plants. We explore three interrelated uses of the family metaphor: as a boundary between insiders and outsiders; as an extension of household care relations; and as an equivocal container of grievances. We show these metaphors stem from women's own experiences at the intersections of gender, kinship, ethnicity and community ties, as well as the relative ability of the management to control discursive processes. We argue that it is important to pay attention to these everyday processes through which family gains multiple meanings because these become conduits of gender norms, opening up or closing off complex possibilities for worker resistance and/or compliance. •Multiple meanings of family can circulate within the same workplace setting.•Intersections of gender, kinship, ethnicity and community inform the emergence of multiple meanings for family.•Family ideologies can simultaneously be resources for resistance and compliance.•Demands for collective mobilization can be framed around hegemonic norms of family reproducing patriarchal limits.•There are limits to both resistance and labor control in the use of family discourses.