Finding the Modern Women Workers in Global Era: Hiring and Training Practices in the Corporate Retail Sector in Turkey

This article investigates the formation of a new segment of female service workers in Turkey in global era by paying particular attention to the skill requirements of the corporate retail sector. Drawing on fifteen months’ field research in Istanbul, through both ethnography and in-depth interviews, I show that the corporate retail employers recruit and prepare the female workforce in ways that appeal to the cultural tastes of their target consumers. Specifically, in order to ensure their appeal to those customers with secular orientations and Westernized lifestyles, retail employers hire workers on the basis of their prior dispositions and physical appearance, creating a ‘modern’ female workforce. This article, drawing on gender and labor studies’ interpretations of Bourdieu, extends the literature on gender, globalization and labor.