By Martha Clarke,
Bowdoin College
This week we delved further into issues of globalization and migration as we heard from Irene Ortiz, a local feminist and community activist, about the feminization of poverty. As she began her talk, Ms. Ortiz told us that she would be presenting the point of view of real women, “mujeres de carne y hueso.” The main theme of the talk was the idea that even though globalization has brought much economic advancement to Mexico, women (in Mexico and elsewhere) are still very much second class citizens. Ms. Ortiz agued that globalization as a whole is a economic process that promotes mass impoverishment and funnels capital out of the pockets of the many into the hands of the few. She asserted that globalization has complicated matters for Mexican women in particular as they are forced into the workplace.
As we have seen throughout the course of the semester, NAFTA and neoliberal economics have made basic survival very difficult for Mexicans. We have learned that it takes four to five minimum wages for a Mexican family to buy just basic food products. Because of this, Mexican women are forced out of the home to work. While to many Americans this may seem like a liberating experience, Ms. Ortiz explained that this move into the formal workplace is simply a consequence of bad economic and political policies. Additionally, women are exposed to very poor working conditions; as in the United States, they don’t receive the same pay as men; in fact, 45% of working women receive 10% less pay than men for the same amount of work. Ms. Ortiz also explained that in cases where men and women do earn the same salary this is not because women’s salaries were raised to match men’s, it is because men’s salaries were dropped due to the Structural Adjustment Policies.
Beyond this, Latina women are subjected to harsh labor conditions in maquiladoras and other places of employment. Ms. Ortiz relayed an anecdote about a maquila in Guatemala in which the women employed there were encouraged to work triple shifts (18 hours straight). Because the factory was located so far away from the city center, women had to sleep on the floor in the hallways of the maquila in order to be on time for their next shift. Because of occurrences like this, Irene Ortiz explained that work has simply become another form of oppression for Mexican women, not an avenue towards economic independence as it is in the United States.
She furthered this argument by examining gender roles in the home. She explained that when they entered the workplace, women were forced to work a “double shift.” In addition to all their workplace responsibilities, they were also still responsible for cooking, cleaning, and caring for the children. Men are not expected to share in the work of the household. Furthermore, there is a huge emphasis on motherhood in Mexico. In order to truly fulfill one’s femininity, it is necessary for a woman to bear children. In many cases, both women and men see the inherent value of a woman as necessarily tied to her position as a mother or housewife. Unmarried women are looked down upon and discriminated against. Mexican women often have children very young and miss out on other social and economic opportunities. Because Mexico is a heavily Catholic country, there is little information available about family planning. In this way, Ms. Ortiz viewed motherhood (and the overemphasis on motherhood) as a type of forced repression. While the matriarch may be a powerful figure in the home, this power does not extend beyond self-sacrifice and caring for others and certainly does not extend into the public sphere.
Ms. Ortiz concluded her talk on a more positive note. She asserted that while the situation may look grim, great strides have been made. The internet and the media have drawn the world’s attention to the plight of women in developing nations. While the feminist movements of each country differ in many ways, people are beginning to mobilize and join together in the fight to promote women’s rights. This talk led me to several questions: What can we, as US citizens, do about the plight of women in Latin America? What are the struggles of minority women (particularly Latinas) living and working I the United States? How does migration affect gender roles?
Martha, I really enjoyed your post. You brought up many great points from Ms. Ortiz’s talk. I too had many of the same questions that you said in your post. After reading your post, I was reminded of what we have learned and read so far this semester about gender roles. As you said in one of your questions, migration to the United States plays a large part in gender roles. For instance when men migrate to the United States for work, they have to learn all the jobs, like cooking and cleaning that women normally have in Mexico. Men might also have to learn how to do the woman’s jobs if their wife is the one who migrates to the United States. There were many examples from the book we read at the beginning of the semester, A Rock and a Hard Place, of men taking on new roles once arriving in the United States. It discussed the difficulties they had, and also how groups of men would work together to accomplish all the tasks that women normally do in the house. I would imagine when the men return from the United States, gender roles might change within the family structure.
ResponderEliminarDear Martha,
ResponderEliminarMy name is Samantha and I am a student with the CIEE program here in Thailand. In reading your post I made connections to my experiences here, and wanted to comment on similarities or differences I noticed. In your post you talked about how women are forced to work a “double shift” when they go out into the work place- women will work a full day only to come home and have all the burdens of the household fall on them. I have seen examples of this in Thailand. In a rural organic farming community we visited in Yasothon, Thailand, many of the women commented that they did almost all the same work on the farm that the men did. In this way, I was pleasantly surprised by the gender equality in these communities. It is interesting to note, however, that much of this gender equality comes from economic need. Similar to your experience in Mexico, equality in the work place has less to do with changing gender ideology, and more to do with economic necessity. I also questioned this apparent gender equality when I noticed the “double shift” phenomenon in these village communities. The women said they would do all the same work in the fields as the men and then would do most of the cooking and cleaning at home. They didn’t seem to have a problem doing this, it was just the accepted norm. Thus, while the “double shift” might not be as problematic in these communities as you have experienced during your time abroad, it is still present here in Thailand.
-Samantha Sencer-Mura
Occidental College
Hi Martha,
ResponderEliminarIn the past I have studied a great deal about the “double shift” and I really enjoyed reading your blog post regarding women in Mexico experiencing the “double shift.” Motherhood is in fact a 24 hour job with no pay. In order to be a financially stable mother, one must find a way to make money, while simultaneously raising children and doing housework. Obviously, raising a child incorporates more than providing food and shelter. Just as importantly, motherhood involves the preservation of a child's life, and the education and training a child needs in order to grow and to be socialized. Motherhood is an avocation that requires deliberative thinking, theoretical thinking, problem solving, subconscious thinking and creative thinking. Being a mother is therefore a job in itself. Because it requires all of one's time and energy to raise a child, in many cases it precludes or interferes with earning a living. Assuming the word “motherhood” refers to women (and does not include men) the sex segregated labor market is one of the causes of the economic liability that is entailed by motherhood. Thus, the majority of women do not have the same opportunities as men and when they do, they are paid significantly less. Therfore, when you state that Ms. Ortiz views motherhood as a type of “forced repression,” I completely agree with this statement.
-Charlotte Friedman
Bates College
Hey Martha,
ResponderEliminarI really enjoyed this article and your point of view on this situation. It's interesting to learn about the role of gender in Mexico in contrast to what I have seen in the United States and in what I have experienced thus far in my semester in Thailand. We recently met with a female community organizer, P'Meow, who is working towards the closing and prevention of mines in the northeast of Thailand. When we asked P'Meow if her gender affected how she works with communities who have village headmen, she claims that her gender does not get in the way of her influence and power. Although women here also have that 24 job of motherhood and taking care of the homes, from what we have seen many women are active within communities and in organizing. But that is not to say that there is complete equality. Although many of the women have claimed a near equal status as mean, compared to American standards there are still obvious forms of female oppression which is especially interesting within a Buddhist society.
Hi Martha,
ResponderEliminarMy name is Claire and I am a student on the CIEE Thailand: Development and Globalization program. Clearly we learn a lot about how development has affected communities in Thailand and what is being done to bring justice to those communities. At Occidental College, I major in Urban and Environmental Policy, where many of my classes also focus on development, but we often discuss the benefits of development and rarely the implications. We are also concerned with how women are portrayed in communities and their roles in community groups. Coming from the U.S. where women are still being discriminated against in the workplace, we fortunately haven’t found that disparity in Thailand. In a way, it is almost like we are looking for gender discrimination that isn’t there. Similar to what you mentioned, on top of contributing to the family’s income, they are also expected to do all the typical housewife duties—cook, clean, raise the children. So perhaps, women in Thailand are being discriminated against in one way or another and do not even know it.
-Claire Coddington, Occidental College
Hi Martha,
ResponderEliminarI'm Emily, another student from CIEE Thailand. As you can probably guess, a lot of us here are interested in gender issues, and have been surprised and challenged to think about it in different ways this semester. One thing I have been thinking about a lot is the difference between gender discrimination or oppression and defined gender roles. In Thailand, although women do many of the same jobs as men in the public sphere, there are pretty clearly defined roles in the home. In the past, I have always thought that this in and of itself was oppressive, but I'm not so sure it has to be. For example, using the same example of the female organizer working with the goldmine community- P'Meow- we asked if she ever felt that she was missing out on being able to form relationships with villagers because she isn't able to sit around with the men and drink whiskey. She laughed, saying that it's no problem because she can sit around with the women and eat som tam (green papaya salad- a popular dish here). In this village, I was staying with two other students in the homes of three women who were all related. Every evening, we would sit on the porch at one of the houses, eating and chatting. Next door, all the men would sit out front of the neighbors' house, doing the same. We joked with our host mothers that ours was the "girls' porch" and that was the "boys' porch". They laughed and agreed. Is gender separation always a tool of repression, or can it sometimes just be a positive form of identity?
Hi Martha,
ResponderEliminarI really enjoyed your article. There has been another really interesting phenomenon that we have seen in Thailand. In the Northeast where we are studying, there has been tremendous migration to Bangkok and other large cities to find work. This migration is targeting specifically the youth – people in their prime working years. So there has been a really strange demography of many of the communities we have stayed in, where we sill stay with young children and their grandparents. The youth to adult aged persons have migrated, if only temporarily, to urban areas in search of jobs.
In one village on the border of Laos, I did have the chance to live with a host sister. She is 26-years old and five months pregnant. She had returned home from Bangkok (where she works) in order to finish her pregnancy and give birth. She was hoping that her mom would care for her child and she would return to Bangkok to work; if her mom were unable to, she would stay in the village until the child could care for itself. It’s an interesting phenomenon that is a result of development, globalization, and migration, but there seems to be a new generation of children in Thailand not being raised by their parents.
Leslie O'Bray
Georgetown University