Gender, Ethnicity and Employment in War and Peace

Gender, Ethnicity and Employment in War and Peace is a timely and innovative feminist international political economy analysis of the changing contours of employment relations regimes in global supply chains. Focused on the changes in one global factory, Gupta Garments Katunayake (GGK), situated in the Katunayake Free Trade Zone in Sri Lanka, the book takes a long-range approach to understanding the relationship between gender, development, security, and employment relations, through the separatist war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, 1983-2009) and post-war periods in Sri Lanka. Presenting a unique longitudinal ethnography spanning 15 years, the book looks at how employment relations regimes contribute to or detract from women’s (in)security in war and post-war contexts. Arguing for a focus on the material relations of production embedded in broader global structures, Gunawardana highlights how women workers and their advocates have continually worked together at times across ethnic divides, to redefine and demand greater economic and political security in various ways. This book enhances our understanding of security in local post-war contexts.