The Stigma Matrix
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As developing states adopt neoliberal policies, more and more working-class women find themselves pulled into the public sphere. They are pressed into wage work by a privatizing and unstable job market. Likewise, they are pulled into public roles by gender mainstreaming policies that developing states must sign on to in order to receive transnational aid. Their inclusion into the political economy is very beneficial for society, but is it also beneficial for women? In The Stigma Matrix Fauzia Husain draws on the experiences of policewomen, lady health workers, and airline attendants, all frontline workers who help the Pakistani state, and its global allies, address, surveil, and discipline veiled women citizens. These women, she finds, confront a stigma matrix: a complex of local and global, historic, and contemporary factors that work together to complicate women's integration into public life. The experiences of the three groups Husain examines reveal that inclusion requires more than quotas or special seats. This book advances critical feminist and sociological frameworks on stigma and agency showing that both concepts are made up of multiple layers of meaning, and are entangled with elite projects of hegemony.
—Erin McDonnell, Author of Patchwork Leviathan
"This remarkable and richly detailed ethnography explores how frontline women workers in Pakistan navigate the colliding norms of purdah and neoliberal economic policies. With a keen analytical eye, Fauzia Husain shows how cultural stigma is shaped, while also providing a novel and multifaceted account of women's agency. The Stigma Matrix is mandatory reading for anyone interested in gender and work in global contexts."
—Rachel Rinaldo, Author of Mobilizing Piety
"[The Stigma Matrix] is well written and will be accessible even to those who know little about Pakistan or Islam. Recommended."
—G. M. Farr, CHOICE
"The Stigma Matrix is written in an accessible manner and provides a compelling mix of ethnographic narratives and complex theoretical work. Husain provides a contemporary perspective on canonical topics such as stigma and agency and offers portable frameworks that scholars may apply in other contexts."
—Sidra Kamran, Journal of Development Studies
"An important contribution to the scholarship on gender, neoliberalism, and the public space, The Stigma Matrix is a meticulously crafted book that explores the experiences of the 'so-called dirty women' in Pakistan's public service.... The book convincingly attends to how political economic structures and colonial histories generate stigma for women and work in particular globalized contexts."—Maria Rashid, The Developing Economies
"The Stigma Matrix is an elegantly written and critical contribution to the growing scholarly literature on gender in Pakistan. It beautifully explicates how women navigate stigma while maintaining their dignity and integrity as frontline public workers in a deeply patriarchal context."—Ayesha Khan, Pacific Affairs
