Working the Night Shift Women in India}}}s Call Center Industry [Hardcover]

Relatively high wages and the opportunity to be part of an upscale, globalized work environment draw many in India to the call center industry. At the same time, night shift employment presents women, in particular, with new challenges alongside the opportunities. This book explores how beliefs about what constitutes women's work are evolving in response to globalization.Working the Night Shiftis the first in-depth study of the transnational call center industry that is written from the point of view of women workers. It uncovers how call center employment affects their lives, mainly as it relates to the anxiety that Indian families and Indian society have towards women going out at night, earning a good salary, and being exposed to western culture. This timely account illustrates the ironic and, at times, unsettling experiences of women who enter the spaces and places made accessible through call center work.Visit the author's website athttp://www.working-the-nightshift.comandfacebook group. It will be difficult for anyone who has not recently conducted research in India to appreciate the massive social changes which the outsourcing revolution has brought to that society. Reena Patel's excellent ethnography,Working the Night Shiftdoes, however, succeed in conveying to readers a sense of what is involved when new customer service industries originating in the West explode on the local scene . . . [T]he book provides a much needed gender dimension to research on global call centres. In this timely, beautifully written, and path-breaking ethnographic exploration, Patel brings to life the often unnoticed human beings who answer our phone calls on the other side of the world, making visible the dreams, lives, and desires of the women behind the anonymity of the call centers. In clear and accessible prose, she interweaves insls