應用女性主義地理學的進路,Lawson分析在厄瓜多爾新自由主義緊縮政策下,性別化的勞動力供應,如何整合進成衣業的正式與非正式部門. 她運用深入訪談與整體分析,生動地呈現了厄瓜多爾婦女日常生活的經驗,看她們是如何成為非正式勞工,被邊緣化並無法受到國家的保護,又是如何從非正式經濟活動中取得權力並認同自身的自主性.

    Lawson 揭露了厄瓜多爾的國家如何經由石油輸出積累的過程中,在社會政治經濟的領域裡,成為主要的行動者,並且促成了製造業正式部門的快速擴張.然而在1980年代,世界經濟衰退造成石油下跌與外債利率上揚,厄瓜多爾遂面臨了經濟危機,並開始與國際貨幣基金(IMF)協商, 同時答應打開厄瓜多爾的經濟並接受IMF的檢查與改革,這意味著厄瓜多爾必須執行更徹底的新自由主義與貨幣政策.因此在這樣的壓力下,國家必須撤回社會福利計劃,結果這樣的社會調節造成了婦女更大的社會壓力,她們必須加重其工資活動以添補逐漸減少的家戶收入,並且投入更多的家戶再生產勞動,因為國家已經撤回了這部分的支出.

    Lawson 以成衣業為例來揭露這樣的再結構過程,她認為裁縫工會是歷史地與系統性地將婦女與印地安人排除在外,以策略地保護男人作為稀少的技術勞動力,經由技術與工會的父權建構,婦女被歷史性地邊緣化了. 然而在全球追求彈性廉價勞動力,以及作為妻子母親的強大意識型態的支持下,婦女逐漸從正式工廠製造業中消失,並成為非正式的成衣製造者—特別是在家工作者. 然而,Lawson拒絕經濟決定論, 她強調這些婦女的家務責任與對家計的經濟貢獻, 使得這些婦女獲得自尊與個人權力. Lawson 細緻的研究幫助我們從鉅觀與微觀的視野了解到產業再結構中的性別關係.更有甚者,這樣的研究超越了”生產—再生產”的雙元論,並從婦女的日常經驗中提供了一個動態的”行動者—結構”的分析.
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Lawson, Victoria.(1995), Beyond the Firm: restructuring gender divisions of labor in Quito’s garment industry under austerity, in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, volume 13, pp415-444.

    Employing a feminist geographic approach, Lawson analyses how the gendered labor supplies incorporated in the formal and informal sector of garment industry under neoliberal austerity policies in Ecuador. Using in-depth interviews and aggregate analysis, she represents a vivid picture of Ecuadorian women’s daily experiences, how they became informal workers and marginalized from state protections, how they took power and identified their autonomy through their informal economic activities. Lawson shows how the state has become a central actor in social, political, and economic spheres with oil-based process of accumulation and facilitated the rapid expansion of formal manufacturing. However, in the 1980s as a world recession depressed oil price and pushed interest rates on foreign loans upward, Ecuador faced economic crisis and began to negotiate with the IMF and opened the Ecuadorian economy to IMF scrutiny and reform, which mean to implement strong neoliberal and monetarist policies. The state has rolled back social welfare programs, as a result, these social adjustment exert pressure on women who need to intensify their wage-earning activity to supplement declining household incomes and engage in more reproductive activities from which the state has withdrawn. Lawson exemplifies garment industry to reveal this restructuring process. She argues that tailors guilds were historically and systematically excluded Indians and women as a strategy to protect men’s position as a scarce and skilled labor force, then women were historically marginalized through the patriarchal construction of skill and guilds. However, in the conditions of global pursuit of flexible low-cost labor and the strong gender ideologies of being a wife or mother, women have been steadily disappearing from formal factory manufacturing and become informal garment producers—especially homeworkers. Nevertheless, refusing economic determinism, Lawson emphasizes that these women have achieved their self-esteem and personal power because of their domestic responsibilities and economic incomes contributing to their household. Lawson’s detailed research helps us to understand gender relations in the industrial restructuring process from the macro and micro perspective; moreover, this research is beyond the production-reproduction dualism and provides a dynamic actor-structure analysis from women’s daily experiences.