Temp(t)ing Bodies: Shaping Gender at Work in Japan

This article explores how gender is embodied and embedded in organizations. Organizational embodiment and gendered work are linked to new forms of labor market segmentation around aesthetic labor. The analysis makes visible the situated forms of body management and the productive modes of embodiment in a gender regime as ways of organizing and ordering masculinities and femininities in a valued hierarchy. A case study of temporary employment provided by a multinational temporary-help company situates the global in culturally local contexts of gendered work and employment conditions.