Maquilidaras and Disposability of Women

Discussed throughout scholarship, there is a prevailing stereotype of the Third World woman as rural, naïve, and incredibly sexualized. Melissa Wright in her analysis of the astonishing number of murdered and abused women in the City of Jaurez address this tendency to “blame the victim.”

(Crosses marking graves of murdered women in Jaurez)

A practice of blaming the victim has become standard toward mistreated women working and living in Maquiladora towns. The discovery of mass graves in the desert containing the bodies of hundreds of murdered women, most of whom were never even recognized as missing, was cited by the Mexican officials as an issue of behavior and dress of the victimized women. Believing that no real respectable woman would be out dancing or drinking in the city after dark, and therefore would not be in a position to be murdered, many felt the death of these women was a direct result of their sexual behaviors. For the men, who murdered, raped, and abused these, women could not be held accountable for their actions toward promiscuous, suggestively dressed women for, “Men will be men.”⁷

These beliefs held firm even after one woman survived a brutal attack and was deserted in the desert, only to name her bus driver, hired by the Maquiladoras, as her attacker. It was her commute to and from work, a service provided by the Maquiladoras, which put her in danger; nothing to do with questionable behavior.

I propose a deep connection exists between the disposable attitude toward the women of Jaurez, and other Maquiladora towns, and the treatment of these women within the Maquiladoras themselves. On the tenets of Wright’s argument presented in “The Dialectics of Still Life: Murder, Women, and Maquiladoras,” the attitude of women perpetrating their own decline in value can be seen both in the reaction to the Jaurez murders and the dismissal of high female turnover rates.

Many Maquiladora managers site women as inherently non-trainable and disloyal; therefore female turnover is only natural. Many women are never offered training, which leads to turnover as women burn out on highly detailed, low skill, repetitive tasks. Many women are medically forced to seek new positions after as little as year as the current task they perform has worn out some aspect of their body. With time, Maquiladora women depreciate (be it in society or in the workforce) from something of value, to that of waste.

“Mexican women depicted in the murder narratives as a life stilled by the discord of value pitted against waste…[ultimately] how does the value of her presence measure against the value of her absence?”⁷

The revolutionary documentary Senorita Extraviada

A short film clip from the documentary.

Maquiladoras and NAFTA

In January 1994, Mexico, the United States, and Canada signed a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) creating the largest trading bloc in the world. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) created a system that eliminated tariffs, quotas, and other trade barriers between the three countries over a fifteen year period (Hashemzadeh, 1997) Economists believed that with the elimination of barriers to trade overall economic income would rise throughout the continent. There were skeptics to this new agreement who predicted that the addition of Mexico to the trade group, with its significantly lower wages, would result in an exodus of industrial jobs from the United States (U.S.) and Canada.


Overall, trade between Mexico and the United States rose from $98.3 billion to $134 billion in the first two years after signing the agreement (Hashemzadeh, 1997). While maquiladoras were already in place before NAFTA, Mexico saw a surge in their productivity after its trade agreement with the U.S. and Canada.


Economics aside, the central issue of NAFTA is that of ethics. Discussion dissecting the ethical implications of supporting a system with substandard wage and employment practices is necessary to determine if the economic benefit outweighs the ethical deficit. Ultimately is it ethical to encourage a system of trade which encourages low wages and substandard working conditions, as long as those conditions are not on U.S. soil?


While NAFTA has greatly benefited Mexico economically through increased exports, strengthened confidence of international investors, and a surge in production, there are intrinsic problems with a system of substandard labor conditions and unequal treatment. Since the onset of NAFTA there has been a steady increase in maquiladora production, a labor force comprised mainly of unskilled, untrained women. Maquiladoras, while providing work for those that may not otherwise have the opportunity for employment, promotes a cycle of low-wage jobs with a high turnover rate due to the demands of strenuous manual labor. Additionally, this turnover rate is encouraged by maquiladora owners as it creates a constant influx of new workers, keeping wages low.


From a business standpoint it must be argued that NAFTA has benefited its member nations. For the longevity of this union, however, there are certain standards of morality that must be addressed including labor conditions and compensation that apply to the production of all products exported from each country. Issues of base levels of pay, working conditions, maternity and sick leave, and opportunities for advancement must all be discussed before a successful trading future is possible between any members of NAFTA. Allowing one country in the agreement to continue practice that would not be acceptable in the others is at its base unethical.

Maquiladora Women: Facts

80% of the Maquiladora workforce is comprised of primarily women, typically young women. Many supporters of the Maquiladora system argue that Maquiladoras provide these women with opportunities that they would not ordinarily have in the regular Mexican labor market. Many maquiladoras provide the opportunity not only for work for women, but as well provide transportation to and from work, and often a free meal in the company cafeteria. These benefits, however, come with several stipulations. If a worker were to miss a day’s work for whatever reason, the worker is then not allowed to take advantage of the free transportation or meal for the remainder of the week. Without these benefits, often workers are unable to make it to work and result in a losing their jobs.

While ratio male to female in the Maquiladora work force has evened out more in recent years, Women still comprise, up to 89%, of low skill, low wage jobs.³ Women are often forced into these positions due to lack of seniority as well as an inability to obtain skill training. Annually, women receive a mere 8 days training while men are reported to receive up to 22 days training.

A major issue in Maquiladora workforce is that of turnover. An average Maquiladora can be expected to experience a cumulative turnover of 85 % a year, with some experiencing over 100% turnover annually.¹ Turnover intrinsically affects the labor capital of women. With increase in seniority, in turn there is seen an increase in skill and overall wage earning potential. Of the group comprising the least seniority (0-9 months) women and men were equally split, but the group with the greatest seniority was significantly more populated by men.³

Gender differentiation in the workforce is not accidental. Often Maquiladoras specifically target women for specific types of employment. A common phrase “Personal Femenino” is used to specifically note the desire for women to be hired for positions.³ Of a study done on job advertisements in one Mexican newspaper, over 39% specified gender in the job requirements.

Terms to Be Defined

Maquiladoras:
Typically low cost manufacturing plants established on the Mexican side of the U.S. Mexican border.3 Products are sent from U.S. to Mexico to be assembled and then shipped back to U.S. as finished goods.1 Costs are kept low through low wages as well as an agreement between U.S. and Mexico to only tax the value of the labor added while in Mexico. While Maquiladoras were first established in the 1970’s, they saw a boom after the signing of NAFTA. Maquiladoras were established not only as an opportunity for low cost manufacturing but in the hopes of decreasing illegal immigration of Mexicans to U.S.2

NAFTA:
A free trade agreement between Mexico, U.S., and Canada established in 1994 to eliminate trade barriers such as tariffs and quotas in order to foster trade between the countries.4 NAFTA was hoped to boost economic growth in Mexico, as an increase in standard of living in Mexico would ultimately benefit all three countries of the agreement. Many economists at the time of the NAFTA signing feared the loss of American jobs to the cheap labor force of Mexico, characterized by what Ross Perot coined “a giant sucking sound to the south.”5

For the actual text of NAFTA as well as further information on its implications please refer to http://www.nafta-sec-alena.org/

Ethical Environment:
A new concept proposed to the business world as an awareness of the ethical and moral sensibilities of those who manage and the consequences of their management. This awareness is intrinsically tied to one’s cultural context. Used to propose that successfully economic environment is not sufficient to justify a possibly unethical worker/management environment.6

Disposability:
In this context applied to the women workers of Mexican Maquiladora plants, the continual waning of a woman’s value with the decrease in her labor worth. A woman’s value in this context is a commodity to be used up, inevitably over time. Tied into cultural contexts, disposability ultimately blames the woman for the result of her own value deterioration.7

Worker Exploitation:
Punctuated by low wages and long hours performing repetitive low skill tasks, worker exploitation can be defined as “the utilization of labor power of another person without giving a just or equivalent return.”8 Some scholars have argued that the very nature of Multination Corporations (MNCs) in Mexico rely on worker exploitation through the cultural norm of Mexican patriarchy over Mexican women.3

Transnational Feminist Theory:
The concept of Transnational Feminist Theory (TFT) requires recognizing that women globally do not have the same experiences.9 This requires a dissolution of gender essentialism (that all women regardless of culture experience the same) and cultural essentialism (that all people of one culture regardless of gender experience the same).10 This is vital when studying the situation of Mexican women in Maquiladoras and proposing cultural change from the perspective of a western, non-Mexican, woman.

Objectives

*Define Maquiladora, and the current working conditions for women within Maqiladoras

*Establish the connection between a culture of disposability and the disposable attitude toward women workers in the Maquiladoras

*Discuss the international obligation to enforce higher standards of working environment conditions, pay, and compensation

*Through the principals of Transnational Feminist Theory, propose how to contribute to improving conditions for women within Maquiladoras