Work Discipline In The Workplace

Gender and ‘work discipline’ are very important factors in the workplace and the attempt to forge work discipline is depicted in Aihwa Ong (1988) and Leslie Salzinger (2003) readings. In both of these articles the work discipline creates conflict rather than good efficient workers and the reason for this is the stereotypes about gender.

Gender can be defined as the state of being male or female and this seems to have created conflict in the Malaysian and Mexican factories as the men and women compete with each other for certain positions. Work discipline is the most important factor in the workplace as the workers need to be controlled and have rules in place in order for the business to be successful but in both of these readings this is

This makes the women feel oppressed and exploited and so they are feeling stressed and worried and pressured in the workplace and this seems to be the main cause of the spirit visitations. Women are being mistreated and are treated inferior to the male supervisors. The supervisors do not see it in this way because due to Aihwa Ong (1988:32) “the disruptions caused by spirit incidents seem a form of retaliation against the factory services.” They think it is the women fighting for equality and fighting against their work but this is not the case. The male supervisors are trying to enforce work-discipline by being harsh to the women and the outcome is negative as women are not being productive because of

“It is free spirits that are responsible for attacking people who unknowingly step out of the Malay social order.” (Ong, 1988:31). This emphasises that women are becoming more masculine and working in factories which changes what should be happening and this seems to result in women being possessed by spirits. The male gender was seen as the dominant gender and that is why the male supervisors were so harsh to the women workers because they felt like they needed to assert their masculinity and show the women who is in control. By doing so they were creating work-discipline but the opposite occurred because the women were being interrupted by spirit possessions and this stopped the work. “What seems clear is that spirit possession provides a traditional way of rebelling against authority without punishment..” (Ong, 2003: 33). Women stated that one of the causes for the visitations were “superstitious beliefs” but the men think this is just an excuse to stop working and be free from the stresses of the factory. Another issue that was raised is that women are seen to be weaker during their menstrual cycle and so the supervisors are blaming this for the spirit visitations because the women are unable to defend themselves from the spirits at this time. The supervisors are seen to be taking advantage of the problems