Bringing Fantasies To Life: Panoptimex

1. Bringing Fantasies To Life: Panoptimex Paper by Leslie Salzinger Presentation by Josy Sable

2. Overview Panoptimex, a maquila in Ciudad Juarez, is organized and run solely through gender and sexual objectification. “Panoptimex owes its success to a set of meaning-imbued labor control practices in which workers are constituted and incorporated into production primarily as women and men, and only within that framework, as workers.”

3. Panoptimex • U.S. owned TV assembly plant in Ciudad Juarez • Highly successful: fast production, high quality levels, all for low cost • Consistently run over budget, but stays open anyway because Panoptimex improves the image of “Electroworld,” the transnational corporation that owns Panoptimex.

4. Employees • Highest level: Imported European and U.S. based managers • Supervisors and middle management: Mexican men • Higher-paid assembly workers: Mexican men • Lower-paid assembly workers: Mexican women

5. Women in Panoptimex • 70-75% women in on the shop floor; men have never worked in the chassis-building section, the “lowest” work. • Average age of women under 20 • Workers hired based on these requirements, in this order: • Female • Young • Slim, thin hands, and short nails • Not pregnant, uses birth control, and childless • Often transported in from rural areas

6. Women at Panoptimex • Paid US$40 weekly—not enough to live on independently in Juarez • Pay contingent on perfect attendance • Seniority means nothing and there are few promotions • Social workers police behavior and appearance, and problems are seen as stemming from out of control emotions and inappropriate attitudes

7. Men in Panoptimex • Floor workers: • Emasculated men • Ignored by management • Supervisors: • Stand directly over the shoulders of women works • Function to sexualize women through flirting, affairs, cajoling/scolding • Management: • Watch over middle management and women from glass walled offices • Walk to directly speak to women, act to sexualize women in ways shown above

8. In the Fishbowl • Panoptimex creates policy which strictly enforces the “male gaze.” • Entire focus of the maquila is to see and be seen • Everything is visual: • Color coded tape on floors • Color coded shirts for workers • Quality control graphs above each workers’ head

9. Conclusion • Panoptimex’s success is based on a hierarchy of gender • Enjoyable and pleasurable to those who “win” and yet detrimental to both men and women • Shows an extreme of gender in the workplace • Successful not from in the capitalist system, but from a social, gender based system