The Opression of Female Workers in Industrial Sector from Gayatri Spivak Prespective

This study examines the oppression of female workers from Gayatri Spivak perspective, especially on the silence of female workers due to the patriarchal culture and the gender imbalances, and understands the meaning of oppression experienced by female workers. This research was conducted in the industry of Medan City, with feminist ethnography method, focuses on subjects experience (views, behavioral expressions, actions) about the oppression object of female workers. In order to obtain the data and information about the meaning of oppression, there are 16 subjects were directly involved in experiencing the oppression and 5 informants who have knowledge about workers on the oppression experienced by female factory workers. The result of the study was the silence of female workers is due to patriarchal culture, puts the women dominated and subordinated within the scope of family and society, the patriarchal structure which places the men as the dominant in the family. The influence of the patriarchy is the division of work by sex in the industrial sector. Female workers experience oppression due to the gender inequality. The differences of men and women caused by patriarchy have produced the gender inequalities in the industrial sector in the form of subordination, violence, discrimination, stereotype, marginal double burden. The oppression is interpreted by female workers as a compulsion to play a role in helping the economy of the family and increasing the production output to the company. This study finds that socio-economic factors cause female workers experience oppression in the domestic and public sectors; there is a gap for female workers to negotiate with husbands, companies, supervisors, team leaders, in written, verbal and insurgent forms through body language. In Spivak's theory, the subaltern is experiencing oppression in the culture, religion and power. Meanwhile in this study it reveals the economic influence in the domestic and public sectors that causes the female workers to speak out.