Domingo-Cabarrubias 77 service industry, has in recent years generated many “high value” but short term jobs for young, English-speaking Filipino women who work night shifts at great expense to their health, family and social life. Global Outsourcing and the Continuing Feminization of Labor Research on call centers in Ireland, the Netherlands, and United Kingdom has indicated that women make up the majority of call center workers (Belt et al. 2002). This is consistent with the trend in Philippine call centers (see Cabrera-Balleza 2005 and Pineda Ofreneo 2005). This trend continues what has been referred to as the “worldwide feminization of the labor force and employment” (Pineda-Ofreneo 2005 citing ILO 2004 World Commission Report). Belt et al. (2002) examined the relationship between the feminization of the labor market and the demand for stereotypical feminine qualities and social skills in service-based economy, specifically in call centers. Observing that the general shift from manufacturing towards the services in recent years was accompanied by a considerable increase in women participating in the labor market, they cited the observations of a number of authors (Belt et al. citing Adkins 1995; McDowell 1998; Woodfield 1998; Bradley et al. 2000), that female labor power is increasingly in demand in part because women are believed to naturally possess in abundance many of the social skills required by employers in service-based economy, especially in the so-called “interactive service occupations,” in which the central emphasis is upon face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact with people. They posited that call centers are good sites in which to explore questions on how “feminine” social skills are being used by employers in the service industries, and to what extent these skills are valued, acknowledged and rewarded. This is so not only because women make up the majority of employees in the industry, but also because it has been claimed by employers that women are more suited to the work than men because they are more likely to possess the appropriate social skills, particularly the ability to “smile down

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