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FEMINIST ETHNOGRAPHIES ON THE NATURE OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM HAVE PROVIDED A wealth of knowledge on the gendered nature of transnational subcontracting and on the ways that women in the many parts of Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America have been constructed as the "ideal" workers within transnational factories producing garments, food products, shoes, electronics, and transcriptions at nominal cost in developing countries. This article explores a seemingly opposite trend at play in Indian call centers that provide voice-to-voice service to U.S. clients. Call center work is in many ways the epitome of what is commonly seen as "women's work." Providing good service on the telephone requires skills associated with hegemonic femininity, such as being nice, making customers feel comfortable, and dealing with irate customers (Hochschild, 1983; Steinberg and Figart, 1999; Leidner, 1999). Yet, interestingly enough, call center work in the newly emerging centers in New Delhi is not always segregated by gender. In fact, in the interviews I conducted, managers, trainers, and workers unanimously and emphatically construct their jobs in call centers as free of gender-bias and equally appropriate for male and female workers.1 This article evaluates these discursive claims of occupational desegregation in transnational call center work in India. I argue that the gender segregation in segments of the outsourced call center industry in India is situated within the context of racial hierarchies between Indian workers and Western customers, which fundamentally structure transnational service work. Gender is "eclipsed" in the sense that it is hidden behind a profound, racialized gendering of jobs at a transnational level.
Segregation and Desegregation in Global Production
One hallmark of transnational subcontracted work has been the vast numbers of jobs specifically targeted for women workers. Since the 1970s, researchers have noted women's overrepresentation in export-processing industries (Salzinger, 2003: 12). As Basu and Grewal (2001: 943) summarize, "capitalism [has] depended on sexism in order to be global." Ong (1991: 287) notes that "if we look at the figures for all off-shore industries, women tend to comprise the lower-paid half of the total industrial work force in developing countries.... They are concentrated in a few industries: textiles, apparel, electronics, and footwear." Women's appropriateness for these jobs is often defined in ideological terms (such as natural dexterity or assumed nimbleness) and women...