Gender and Labor Issues

  When I was 15 I was going to football games, thinking about what kind of car my parents would be giving me on my next birthday and walking around my neighborhood, in total safety, for hours on end with my friends. When Claudia Gonzalez turned 15 she took a job in a factory working 45 hours a week not making much more than the $20 I got each week for my allowance. “If you want a beautiful life, you must work for it” (Ciudad Juarez). While this sentiment is universal it holds an entirely different meaning for the women working in the maquiladoras. These women are working in unbearable conditions for dollars a day just to keep their families alive. We paid more for this book than many of these women make working several weeks. After 5 years of working, striving for “the beautiful life”, Claudia disappeared and was savagely murdered. She became another one of the countless young women murdered in Juarez whose family will never have justice for her death.

  It is impossible to look at gender and labor issues without looking at it from an intersectional approach. Geography, gender, race, economic status; all of this and more comes into play when looking at the inequalities of labor on a global scale. In our society, could you even imagine someone telling you that you had to take a pregnancy test, and it had to be negative, to get a job? But in the maquiladoras this is an everyday fact of life. “Pregnancy tests for applicants, pressure on pregnant workers and ill treatment - most of the 2100 maquiladoras systematically violate women’s fundamental rights, while the Mexican authorities turn a blind eye” (IWS, 468). We continue, however to support these multi-billion dollar businesses that perpetuate these practices. As we put on our $100 pair of Nike running shoes are we thinking about the .47 cents per hour that a woman was paid to work in the factory that produced them? Or the fact that her children are home with no supervision being left to fend for themselves against countless horrors? Would we dare put our own children in that same position?

  These women do what they have to and tolerate what they must to ensure their survival and that of their families. Because of the cultures they are part of they are made to feel that they have no choice but to endure the atrocities that are bestowed upon them simply because they are women. Many are the sole earners in their family but are afforded no respect for what they do because it is expected of them. If they are raped, they brought it on themselves. If they are abused, they did something to deserve it. If they are murdered, they can be easily replaced.

  The next time you sit in your Ford or Chevy, take a picture with your Kodak camera or watch your Sony TV, ask yourself what was sacrificed for you to have the luxury to do so.