Maggie Nelsen

Economic Globalization

                This week’s set of readings focused on wage labor, sweatshops, and how gender roles and gender tension is intrinsically entangled in the daily life of these factories.  At face value the stark reality of below-subsistence- wage labor and sweatshops may appear a very cut and dried topic. However, these readings revealed the complexity of sweatshop ‘culture’ within these factories and the provocative findings by sociologists and economists. It was also fascinating to extrapolate a major theme from both sweatshops In Indonesia and Mexico. While the social and political realities in rural Java, Indonesia are worse off than Mexican Maquila factory towns; female workers in both countries have found significant value and sometimes even status by working in sweatshops. The prominence of women in the factory labor demographic is undeniable. In Mexico, women are the desired type of worker for their seeming docility, dexterity, endurance, and focus. In some cases women are recruited so heavily that management even pays for the transportation. Traditional, hegemonic masculinity asserts itself in the pay structure of Indonesian factories. Managers there make the outrageous claim that men are paid more because they have to support families, whereas female workers are still typically under the care, or given aid from their parents. When in reality, most men are single and unmarried and women are often single mothers forced to move back in with parents because they are not paid enough to live independently. As a result, women have started saving a portion of their wages, and have found over time the savings are what allows them to build a life for themselves. The savings are a form of insurance against natural disasters, or drought and food shortage; in times like these the savings kept families afloat. The savings also allow women to start a dowry, purchase gold jewelry or cattle. In this sense, the factory wages have become incredibly valuable, not for day-to-day living expenses but for saving. In addition, female workers feel their jobs in cool, indoor factories is much higher-up than farmers out in the patty fields. In this way, sweatshop laborers light skin signifies that at least they are not as low as farmers; working in the factories of multinationals has become a sign of modernity and social status among Indonesians. As a result women are more confident and independent. However, one thing the author doesn’t mention is the downside of this situation: realizing their ability to accumulate money over time by living with their parents, these female workers have found a way to work within the sexist-wage system. Their ingenuity and discipline with money should not go unnoticed. In fact, I recognize a correlation between these smart, money-saving Indonesian women and women who support themselves with the micro-loans given to them by global NGOs, speaks volumes about the resourcefulness, and superior capability of impoverished women compared to their male counterparts. But, there is a clear difference between women receiving microloans and the Indonesian women saving money. Unlike women receiving micro-loans to start their small entrepreneur  businesses, Indonesian women are still stuck within the same sexist wage system. While the author claims the saving system ensures financial security long-term, looking at the bigger picture, women are still confined to the sexist labor standards and will never gain true social mobility.  These Indonesian women will fester in complacency in the factories, and continue to allow themselves to be exploited because they have found an alternative way to make money; but ultimately it is still the same cyclical entrapment the wage-labor life.

                In Mexico gender in the factories arguably plays a more complex role. As mentioned earlier, women workers are more sought after than men. In many factories women and men work together in the assembly lines, performing the same tasks. Not surprisingly, leveling the playing field among men and women in the workplace in this sense is an affront to male workers masculinity. To reassert their masculinity, men make sexual advances towards all the female workers: flirt, whistle, and size-up all the women. And, as might also be expected, many of the women reciprocate by showing up to work in mini-skirts and makeup (“Nine hours of objectification prove less stultifying than nine hours of invisibility”(Salzinger,1997, 569)). However these same women also harness the power they have within these factories as the preferred workers, and use this advantage to play games and one-up the men in ways they can’t outside the factories; women are stuck, “at an intersection of two contradictory gendered identities that hold assertion and passivity, work and sexuality, in complex tension”(Salzinger, 558). This culture has become commonplace among many of the Mexican factories. Reading on this section of the readings, I found it fascinating that hegemonic gender dynamics and traditional forms of femininity/masculinity can transcend culture and class. Whether it is poor women working in sweatshops or a group of rich female lawyers—the same sexualized gender dynamics come into play in both workplaces. Reading this article, at first I felt like delving so deeply into the existing sexist framework and gender dynamics in these factories was a little beside the point considering the other more horrifying conditions of the situation for these people…I felt a little like the author, as a westerner, was applying a “First world problem” (equality for women) onto a country which is not in the same privileged position as the U.S. However, continuing to read, and with the insight from the other readings, I began to see the importance and impact gender dynamics has in the bigger picture of sweatshop labor practices, and the realities of impoverished women around the globe.

                The two Times articles were particularly provocative and introduced some though-provoking ideas to mull around in one’s head: the concept that sweatshops are good—considering the alternatives. Both authors of each article make the same argument that in rural areas sweatshops are much more desired and appealing to the impoverished when the alternatives are begging and scrounging for goods, while enduring the elements. I would imagine that the authors would argue that sweatshops provide not only a sheltered, indoor workplace, but steady returns (however unlivable) and routine. The problems with their arguments are that they’re using a pathos-saturated narrative of young mutilated beggar children in India, or dirty trash diggers in Cambodia.  Their underlying justification and conceptual framework for the promotion of sweatshops is choosing the lesser evil makes it “okay”.