The 'Maquila' Women

...More importantly, they share a conventional differentiation between "decent" and "indecent" female behavior...

...Among those interviewed, the consensus was that maquiladora work offered the best employment alternative in Ciudad Juirez, a striking revelation inasmuch as assembly operators earn an hourly wage of $1.00 and work 48 hours a week...

...They were expanding production and hiring people...

...she would have to leave her whole family behind...

...Indeed, one third of all women in apparel manufacturing in Ciudad Juirez are heads of households...

...5 (May-June 1975...

...Women workers are trapped both by traditional suspicions about their participation in the world outside of home and family, and by corporate programs designed to reinforce the submissive "feminine" behavior that they have been taught all their lives...

...This is particularly true given the size and age composition of their households...

...In the majority of cases, women have a double work load...

...Women's employment has not decreased their responsibility for domestic chores...

...See alsoJune Nash, "Certain Aspects of the Integration of Women in the Development Process: A Point of View," Conference Background Paper - World Conference on the International Women's Year (New York: United Nations, 1975...

...They have no jobs...

...Although fathers, brothers, husbands and other male relatives may live under the same roof with these young women, evidence indicates that the majority are either unemployed or underemployed...

...and it is not witnessing the emergence of large numbers of educated women running up against the double day, anachronistic constraints on their behavior or rigid walls of discrimination in the male-domi.nated professions...

...In a country in which, for better or worse, women aspire and are encouraged to become mothers and/or housewives, does factory work necessarily indicate an expansion of alternatives for women or their families...

...59-84, and K. Martin and P. Tallock, Trade and Developing Countries (London: Croom Helm, 1977...

...She paid 100 pesos for babysitting out of her weekly wage of 875 pesos (roughly $4 out of $37...

...The idea of a Gay Pride march in a place like Mexico City would have been unthinkable a few years ago...

...The result of this convergence of economic realities has been the swift transformation of women into the main providers of stable and regular income for their families...

...Some women, seeing their sexuality as the only viable means to gain access to employment, offer themselves to men in decision-making positions...

...They have thus far been unable to erode female subordination, challenge established norms, or even achieve solidarity on the basis of class and gender...

...Her young brother, Gerardo, and two aunts, Kica and Julia, also live there with their two children...

...Resorting to the mercy of the Virgin does not indicate an innate conservative streak, but a last resort when no real power to change one's own life exists...

...and "Women, Production and Reproduction in Industrial Capitalism: A Comparison of Brazilian and U.S...

...Ultimately, it does not imply a fight for equal access to exploitative and alienating work, but for a social system in which people are truly free to control their own lives...

...And while most people would still define themselves as opposed to "women's lib," the topic is in the air...

...As is clear by these maneuvers, corporate-style "liberation" and more traditional expressions of women's oppression thus reinforce each other, defining the ideological framework within which real conflicts and fears are allowed to be articulated...

...Some companies offer courses on human sexuality, birth control and home economics to their workers...

...Of 16SeptlOct 1980 more than 100 married workers interviewed, only one lived in a situation where her male companion had taken full charge of housework and child care while she acted as sole provider...

...While the av15NACLA Report erage number of household members in Ciudad Juirez is 5.3, the average for maquila workers is seven, three or four of whom are likely to be under 14 years of age.' Even more important is that the majority of men belonging to the same household are either unemployed or underemployed due to the scarcity of viable employment alternatives for men...

...many are single mothers who represent the only means of support for their children...

...When Manuel was fired from CENTRALAB, he did not take over any part of the domestic chores...

...Public relations managers for the maquiladoras have countered these accusations by pointing to specific policies implemented to reaffirm the value of femininity and a stable family life...

...Maybe they think that if you have to work, there is also a chance you're a whore...

...881(1977), pp...

...In the Mexican-American border area, racial, ethnic, national and religious differences are generally non-existent...

...According to this view,, as women gain economic power, daughters begin to challenge the authority of parents, wives refuse to comply with the demands of their husbands and, in general, disrespect for "traditional values" becomes rampant...

...Many could not be placed because they didn't have enough education...

...Even 14SeptIOct 1980 more frequent is the case of the young daughter who contributes to the support of both parents and siblings...

...Only a small proportion left their hometowns as unaccompanied young women with the explicit purpose of finding a job in the city...

...Mothers take care of daily domestic expenses and are responsible for housework...

...Runaway Shops on the Mexican Border," NA CLA's Latin A merica & Empire Report, Vol...

...3 (March 1977...

...There are a lot of unemployed men in this city...

...Kica and Julia are production workers at clothing maquiladoras, as is Rosario...

...But when he finally returned with the intent of moving the family to Arizona, Nina was reluctant and afraid...

...She would then cook dinner and tidy up the small adobe house which they leased for 500 pesos ($20 a month...

...Moreover they have not begun en masse to question other cultural or psychological aspects of sexual oppres18S.ptlOct 1980 19 sion...

...A random sample of 510 women working as direct production operators at 14 plants were extensively interviewed on questions of migration, income 34 SeptlOct 1980 distribution and family composition...

...U.S...

...Mague, a maquila worker, summed up the predicament that she and her sisters confront on a daily basis: "No matter how you look at it, we are in a bind...

...In short, will it bring about an improvement of women's political and economic position within and outside the household...

...It is common to hear these women say that they have never experienced discrimination as women.., and that they are in total disagreement with feminism...

...It is not uncommon for a young maquila worker to promptly transfer all her weekly wage to her mother, who in turn gives her a small allowance for essentials...

...See also, D. Nayar, "Transnational Corporations and Manufactured Exports from Poor Countries," Economic Journal, No...

...Such selective recruitment policies can be implemented due to the abundance of women searching for jobs in an environment where unemployment and underemployment reaches 30% ? In apparel, on the other hand, the precarious nature of the industry, due to intense competition, combined with a relatively low capital investment per plant, means that it tends to employ workers whose position in the local labor market is weaker than those hired in electronics...

...Then things changed...

...The same holds true for the Church, which has often been the only acceptable opportunity for public participation and self-expression...

...Notwithstanding the fact that much of women's involvement has been hidden from history in Latin America as elsewhere, active political struggle there has in fact been decidedly male...

...Women as a group in Latin America have often been derided as conservative and reactionary...

...It must struggle for equal opportunity for all people, legislative freedom, and control over one's mind and body...

...Nina, for example, was employed at CENTRALAB, one of the largest electric manufacturers inJuirez...

...7. The empirical information about "maquiladora" workers in CiudadJulrez included in the following pages is based on preliminary results of a sample survey conducted by Maria Patricia Fernandez Kelly between September 1978 and February 1979...

...Sajhau, "Las empresas transnacionales y el bajo costo de la fuerza de trabajo en los paises subdesarrollados," Working Paper No...

...In the vast majority of cases, single daughters live with their parents and siblings while these continue to hold traditional positions in the family hierarchy...

...Of the others, many had been maids, either in Ciudad Juirez or, usually without documents, in El Paso...

...This lack of options "causes [women] to support the very institutions in which they are oppressed...

...Although she had worked there almost three years, she was still on "temporary" status, enabling management to circumvent seniority and indemnification stipulations...

...Women often see their working status as temporary...

...On Fridays I get paid 1, 001 pesos (slightly less than $43...

...Social relations and the politics of reproduction are not only as important in determining our lives, but they are inextricably linked to the politics of production...

...I had two servings, just like an elegant lady in a romantic novel...

...The pertinent question then becomes: how does the participation of women in wage labor affect family structure and organization...

...More difficult to evaluate is the connection that some see between maquiladora work and a change in sexual mores...

...XI, no...

...Nevertheless, she deferred, and on a Sunday afternoon, someone helped them cross the border at a relatively unsupervised spot...

...in many cases women complain that middle management and supervisory personnel ask for sexual favors in exchange for job security...

...Finally he crossed the border without documentation...

...Capital's Flight: The Apparel Industry Moves South," NACLA 's LA & ER, Vol IX, no...

...When he finally left me there was nothing to do but look for factory work...

...This is extended to accusations of growing promiscuity and moral looseness among maquila workers...

...Gender takes their place as a way to divide the labor force...

...At least I can purchase that for myself...

...My mother wants to move to a different area because the barrio is full of idle bums...

...However, "decency" may be a difficult asset to preserve...

...But when a woman's only source of strength, respect and financial support lies in her family, for all its contradictions, she cannot be expected to attack it if an alternative is not readily apparent...

...Yet particularly in electronics, the majority (60%) of the women had held no prior jobs, and in the apparel sector, approximately 30% were employed for the first time...

...Fathers are sources of authority...

...Valentine's Day...

...Extensive interviews with maquila workers indicate that their perceptions, attitudes and aspirations conform to traditional feminine definitions...

...7 They also have lower average levels of schooling than workers in electronics...

...The notion of women's liberation is still foreign to most Latin Americans...

...A large number of assembly workers in the maquilas (some 70%) migrated to Ciudad Juirez, but only 3% came from a rural environment, and their average length of residence in Ciudad JuArez is 14 years, having typically arrived in the city as children in the company of their family...

...On Saturdays I work from 6:30 to 11:30 a. m. -forty-eight hours in total every week...

...On the other hand, critics of maquilas claim that a role reversal takes place which undermines traditional patterns of male authority and the overall cohesion of the family...

...They work to support themselves and their children while Rosario works in the hope of moving to a better home and affording her brother a better education than the one she was able to get herself...

...Many have taken courses in commercial academies or have studied to become professionals such as nurses or computer technicians...

...IX, no...

...He dropped out of school and could not support me...

...Many have sought employment after being deserted by their husbands or after losing economic support from men belonging to their households...

...At sixteen I became pregnant and Carlos married me shortly afterwards...

...However, despite these shared specific concerns and the generalized subordination we all confront, the differences between the situation of women here and in Latin America should not be minimized...

...But I went to school for nine years and have some knowledge of typing and shorthand...

...Women are particularly vulnerable to advances made by men who have a superior status in the professional, economic and educational hierarchy...

...THE 'MAQUILA' WOMEN 1. G. Gonzalez Salazar, "Participation of Women in the Mexican Labor Force," in June Nash and Helen I. Safa, eds., Sex and Class in Latin America (New York: Praeger, 1976), p. 188...

...While small movements for the vote have existed, for example, they were not as extensive as the suffrage or birth control movements in the United States...

...Of course, from the point of view of the maquiladora managers, the prevailing ideological conception of women workers provides the necessary flexibility that adaptation in a fiercely competitive international market demands...

...Domestic work in the U.S...

...The consequence of this is an absolute lack of solidarity with other women and a denial of the fact that they belong to a social group which has specific problems...

...it is not a time of open and lively debate about social values...

...He searched on and off for a job but was unable to find one...

...Myth and promotional hype aside, the employment of women in these transnational assembly plants has not inevitably led to gains in autonomy...

...For a time, Nina's husband, Manuel, was employed at the same plant...

...Factory Workers," (mimeo, no date...

...Annual beauty contests are held and, in many plants, operators receive red carnations on St...

...To be confused for a prostitute is cause for grave preoccupation...

...Thus it moves from a moral issue to one with vivid practical consequences...

...5. J. Bayer, "Unidad coordinadora para el empleo, capacitaci6n y adiestramiento," Address before the Regional Convention of "Maquiladora" Associations (Ciudad JuArez, February 9, 1979...

...Moreover, it must be a broader struggle for a social system that does not exploit those gender distinctions to extract cheap women's labor, to use sexuality for profit, and the like...

...and "Electronics: The Global Industry," NACLA's LA & ER, Vol...

...I am buying a stereo system...

...These differences lead us to expect that a richly different women's movement will emerge, with its own timetable and approach to the issues...

...15 (Geneva: International Labor Organization, World Employment Program Research, 1976...

...In sum, the feeble economic and political position that women have in Ciudad JuArez has fettered any advances in consciousness these women have achieved as a result of their experiences...

...The struggle for women's liberation in Latin America, as elsewhere, has to be one that challenges the use of sex to determine what a person can or cannot do, and the division of labor, in its broadest sense, which emerges from these stereotypes...

...Not only is this seen to have deleterious effects upon the "house husband's" sense of manhood, but it is also deplored for the alleged negative effect it has on the welfare of children...

...Maquila Mythologies Impressionistic judgments and lack of empirical information have joined to generate a particular mystique, a nascent folklore, around maquiladora work and workers...

...8. By Mexican law all "maquiladora" direct production workers are affiliated to the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (the Mexican Social Security System) and earn the minimum wage...

...There are also unique conjunctural factors which can be crucial in determining the course and pace of the process...

...Although Manuel sometimes drank in excess and beat Nina occasionally, she earnestly prayed for his return from the United States...

...They eagerly anticipate the prospect of marriage and motherhood, linked to their retirement from the work force...

...Some evidence indicates that loyalties won through romantic entanglement can be fruitfully used by employers to insure efficiency and docility on the job...

...a a a. Many aspects of women's lives in Latin America are not unfamiliar to those of us who live in the United States...

...border towns is more rewarding and clerical work is more prestigious, but maquila work is less risky than the former and requires less training than the latter...

...I give my mother half of my weekly wage...

...They all live now in a drab, tworoom adobe house in Juarez, Mexico, in sight of the shimmering skyline of downtown El Paso, Texas...

...Either as husbands, lovers or managers...

...The former, a relatively stable and capital-intensive sector, results in highly selective employment practices, i.e., women should be single, 17 to 25 years old, childless and with at least six years of formal education (compared to the average 3.8 years for Mexican workers in general) ? In many cases workers must be available for morning and night shifts, and to get the job must pass one or several manual dexterity tests and a pregnancy exam...

...Rosario's story does not differ significantly from that of thousands of Mexican women employed by maquiladoras...

...For three months he was employed as a maintenance worker in a factory in Phoenix, Arizona...

...Transportation, meals at the factory and personal expenses take care of the rest...

...This has led to the proliferation of clothing stores, discotheques and bars, an avalanche of consumer advertising in local newspapers, and a swarm of seductive opportunists waiting at the plant gates on payday...

...Yet one occurred this year, attended by approximately 6,000 people...

...His earnings were being saved to buy a larger house, a goal to which both of them longingly aspired...

...I was fortunate to land a job at RCA...

...Their identification as submissive and supplementary income-earners tends to prevent women from acquiring legitimate status and being able to retain their jobs over extended periods of time.4 The two main industrial sectors making up the maquiladoras- electronics and appareloffer very different conditions...

...Like many women doing assembly work in CiudadJuirez -especially those in the apparel sector-Rosario belongs to a female-headed household with children...

...men have power over us...

...Mother does what she can to take care of the house and the children because neither Kica nor Julia can afford a place of their own...

...It is not a time of economic expansion in which the demand for women's labor is drastically increasing...

...In Mexico as a whole, less than 1% of the women who work in the industrial sector get jobs as direct production operators.' In CiudadJuirez, by contrast, almost half of the total work force is composed of women who work as maquila operators (85% of the maquiladora work force is female...

...According to one common opinion, for example, the maquiladora program has effected a kind of "emancipation" by affording women the opportunity to earn their own income...

...She is young, single and childless, lacking support from either father or spouse...

...Seen in the context of Latin America, maquiladora workers represent a relatively recent and unusual occurrence...

...He was my last hope...

...3. Ratil Trajtenberg and J.P...

...4 (April 1977...

...Women bring to this context a limited history of political activity...

...I wanted to get married because I thought my situation could only improve...

...Like Blacks or Latinos in the United States, women are preferentially hired to perform some of the worst paid and least rewarding jobs...

...Women, it is argued, can now spend money on clothes, jewelry and entertainment...

...17NACLA Report Women and the Church--even there, class divisions alter the experience and, increasingly, the religious message...

...There are a larger number of older women (their average age is 26 as opposed to 20 for workers in the electric/electronic branch...

...Nina would retrieve the children on her way home from work and stop at the barrio store to buy groceries...

...On Saturdays, Nina washed and ironed clothes...

...As long as I work, I don't think I will get married again...

...Instead, it is a time of widespread repression, rampant unemployment and poverty for the region's working class and peasantry, heightened class tensions and dislocations, and a search for revolutionary political alternatives...

...What is noteworthy about these perceptions is their profound ambivalence toward female employment and its consequences...

...Nina's not uncommon experience clearly does not suggest a shifting sense of shared responsibilities, nor an increase of women's participation in decision-making- either on the job or in the household - as a result of their factory employment...

...The limited economic options of working class women is the reality in which they must come to terms with their sexual identity...

...Moreover, the sharp class divisions in Latin America have produced a situation in which women from different classes have little in common, even at the family level...

...And issues that are pushing to the surface there--such as equal pay for equal work, the special needs of working women, and access to safe birth control and abortion- remain the goals of our own struggles...

...Despite her youth, Rosario must always consider her family's situation: "When I see my mother and aunts laugh and chat, I wish we were always happy...

...This preference depends on stereotypes of and prejudice directed against the group in question...

...Even before the death of my baby, Carlos had started to drink...

...The gap between the majority of women and the small elite may be so vast, their experience of sexual oppression so different, as to severely constrain a common effort to combat discrimination, much less engage in a broader common struggle...

...No longer can the public sphere of production in its economic sense be viewed as the only valid arena of struggle...

...Sexual harassment on the job is not uncommon...

...My shift runs from 6:30 in the morning to 3:30 in the afternoon from Monday to Friday...

...Both Kica and Julia were living here when I ran away with Carlos...

...Newton and F. Balli, "Mexican In-Bond Industry," Paper presented at the Seminar on "North-South Complementary Intra-Industry Trade" (Mexico City: UNCTAD, United Nations Conference, 1979), p. 11...

...For a time I thought management would find me a position as a receptionist or secretary, but you need to speak English to even be considered for that, so I guess I'll have to just keep on doing assembly work...

...Despite the rigorous work pace and inconvenient schedule, the subsistence wages and the access to medical care for themselves and their dependents- one of the "fringe benefits"- are vital to these women...

...But the truth is that we have many problems...

...Indeed, only in a very small number of cases are other housing arrangements found, e.g., young women living with other single friends with whom they share expenses...

...Carlos was a student of architecture then...

...Nor is there any indication of significant variations in family mores...

...The first time we went out he took me to 'Cafe d'Europa' and ordered strawberries with cream...

...2. Helen I. Safa, "Multinationals and the Employment of Women in Developing Areas: The Case of the Caribbean," Paper prepared for the Latin American Studies Association (Pittsburgh, 1979) and "Class Consciousness Among Working-Class Women in Latin America: Puerto Rico," in Nash and Safa, eds., Sex and Class...

...As a young woman working at an electronics components plant expressed with worry, "There are those who treat you differently as soon as they know you have a job at a maquiladora...

...While Nina worked the morning shift, her two pre-school children remained in the care of an elderly acquaintance-even when Manuel was at home...

...6. J.R...

...Middle class women, in part because of the advances already made by women in the more developed countries, have been able to gain some limited victories like suffrage, access to education and professional jobs with less difficulty...

...While it is true that more women in Latin America are working than ever before, the general conditions are far less in flux than those of the 1960s which gave birth to the women's movement in the United States...

...all women...

...9. University of Texas, El Paso, The CiudadJudrez Plan for Comprehensive Socio-Economic Development: A Modelfor Northern Mexico Border Cities, 1977...

...4. Safa, "Multinationals and Employment...

...Yet significant signs of change have appeared...

...She also put her background as a beautician to use by cutting and setting her neighbor's hair...