• Women & Globalization

What you don’t think about when getting that cute shirt, or those sick rims for your car

Photo Credit: Free Latin America

Globalization: “the process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale”; in other words, Large companies take their businesses, specifically factories, to foreign countries in order to “expand their business” and become better, however the reality is far more gruesome than it may seem at first.

BMW, Nike, Apple… these are just a few of the many major companies that have branched out of their home countries to less developed countries for one sole reason; cheap labor. Ever since the appearance of the North American Free Trade Agreement, American companies have created factories in Northern Mexico, known as Maquiladoras, where most of the workers are women of extremely low income. These maquiladoras offer very low wages and ridiculously poor working conditions, hardly any labor regulation enforcement and absolute disregard for their employees’ safety and health. One of the biggest problems related to the appearance of these factories along the US-Mexico border is the mass kidnapping, raping, and murder of the young women who work there. Specifically, in the city of Juarez thousands of women have disappeared over the years, mainly taken on their way to and from these maquiladoras. The film by Mexican-American screenwriter and filmmaker Lourdes Portillo, “Senorita Extraviada” gives us the stories of multiple mothers, sisters, daughters, and friends who have disappeared, more precisely been taken, and the common factor is these maquiladoras. In fact, as shown in the film, upon entrance to the job many of the women had to provide photos of themselves which were later discovered to be used by kidnappers to select their victims. You may wonder, if things are so bad, why don’t they get another job? Why not leave the city? The thing is, for many of the affected, and at risk, families moving is not an option. Some of them simply cannot afford moving somewhere else, and many others are actually already under threat by the criminals in the city; if they leave, not only will they be in danger but so will anyone who is related to them.

In a similar way, employees, particularly women, are affected in many other countries in the world; such as women in Jamaica. After Jamaica was given a $4.5 billion loan by one of the biggest legal loan sharks in the world, known as the International Monetary Fund, many companies placed factories in the country, and the effects of this have been very harmful to its citizens. We can see an example in the film by American director Stephanie Black, “Life and Debt”. In this film, we learn how the Jamaican workforce has been affected by this loan, such as women who work in sewing companies. According to the documentary, the working conditions offered by the factory are very unsatisfactory, low wages similar to those seen in Mexican maquiladoras, and when the employees, mostly women, tried to get more rights and higher wages they were fired and some even placed in a “black list” so they wouldn’t be able to find a job anywhere else!

So, other than showing how affected third world countries are by globalization, what else do these cases have in common? Women. Women are particularly hit in these cases by the companies that employ them. It is proof of what is said by Chandra Talpade Mohanty in “Under Western Eyes Revisited: Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles”. In this article, Mohanty points out that “In fundamental ways, it is girls and women around the world, especially in the Third World/South that bear the brunt of globalization”. Mohanty goes on to point out other ways in which women are affected by globalization in terms of environmental effects and the like. Some of which can be seen by multiple accounts of women in countries such as India where women are the main gatherers of essentials such as water and food; thanks to global warming and the like these tasks are becoming harder and harder for these women causing many of them to have health problems and even reach points of extreme starvation.

So while we enjoy all kinds of perks, it is many people are greatly affected in a negative way by globalization and capitalism. The question that remains is, are we going to turn a blind eye, or are we going to get it together and do something about it?