Accounting for Textile Industry and Labor Dynamics in Eritrea (1956–1975): Adding Gender to the Equation

In Eritrea, the history of the textile sector has its roots in the local tradition of spinning and weaving, which assigned roles based on gender and ethnicity. The textile supply chain, instead, was anchored in colonial times, when local market and export-oriented factories emerged, hiring women because of the shortage of male workers and because they could be paid less. From then on it provided women with salaried jobs, upskilling their opportunities and raising their awareness. This article is a factory-based case study that intertwines archival, oral, and visual sources. Its aim is to assess how and why, from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, the inclusion of women as salaried workers in the S.A. Cotonificio Barattolo & Co. (Asmӓra), one of the main textile factories in East Africa, made it a gender-oriented factoryscape that affected the role of women well beyond the labor arena. It examines the recruitment and training processes, the socialization of women as salaried employees, their spatial and social mobility, their reconciliation between productive and reproductive roles, and both their overt and underground resistances. Barattolo is a valuable case study for highlighting gendered labor dynamics from a female perspective.