IMPACT OF ABUSIVE CALLS ON WOMEN EMPLOYEES OF DOMESTIC CALL CENTERS

Very little research has been done on the topic of harassing and abusive phone calls in the workplace. Female workers report receiving more verbal and sexual abuse and harassment on the job through telephone. Three-quarters of the women workers said they had received sexually harassing phone calls, with males making up the vast bulk of the harassers. The most common forms of sexual harassment were grunting, sexual slurs, awkward silences, and overt threats of physical assault. The vast majority of harassed women report feeling tremendous amounts of stress. The perceived strength of a physical reaction increases when sexual violence threats and groans are included in the harassment. The stress of dealing with verbal harassment in home and in the job is greater than that of dealing with it in either setting alone. It is widely known that global capitalism has structured bodily particular forms of labour processes in transnational service labour. Call centre labour has been criticised for its alleged feminization and promotion of "soft masculinities," as well as its racialization, perpetuation of the worldwide division of labour, and contribution to the informalization of third-world employees. However, there is friction between the necessary examination of global disparities in regards to bodies and the West-Rest mentality that might result from such an examination. There is a common belief that globalisation has a "unidirectional and detrimental to the developing country's subaltern true identity" effect on labour processes in the South, placing its population in a "permanent state of subservience inside the global economy." This might be a good rebuttal to blatant neoliberal claims, but it risks ignoring the opportunities for creative blending of old and new modes of modernity and identity building in the process. employees' potential for agency in the future may be obscured by "third world narratives," or at least the embodied processes through which employees negotiate surveillance, control, and agency