The New Women Workers: Does Money Equal Power?
Safa, Helen I.
Though poorly paid and offering few chances of upward mobility, jobs in export manufacturing have provided women workers in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico a weapon with which to challenge...
...uerto Rico's export-led industrialization program, known as Operation Bootstrap, started much earlier than that of most countries...
...Dominican women workers in export manufacturing are not unionized and receive little support from the government in their struggle for better wages and working conditions, or even to upgrade their skills...
...Male activity rates declined significantly from 80.2 to 62.1% between 1947 and 1991, reflecting both the precipitous decline in agricultural employment and increasing levels of higher education, which kept young men (and women) out of the labor market.1' ctory in the La Romana free-trade The activity rate for singly dependent on U.S...
...8 Labor stability in the region...
...Hilda, for example, was fired several years ago government along with 60 other women for trying to organize a union in the factory struggle where she works...
...Most of the jobs generated through export manufacturing are for women, who previously represented a small percentage of the industrial labor force under import substitution...
...Many Caribbean and Latin under the GALS program have grown by 76% annual- American states have been forced to adopt IMF strucly since 1987, but they are limited to garments made tural-adjustment policies, which further reduce their entirely from U.S.-made and cut fabric, control over the economy and usually involve cutU.S...
...Repatriated profits are subject to a 10% Puerto Rican tollgate taxwhich under Section 936 can be reduced by reinvesting in PuertoRico or depositing these profits in banks in Puerto Rico...
...The Caribbean Basin has thus become a cheap labor pool, increasingly dependent on the United States...
...The growing proportion of men inDominican free-trade zones may also be due to a recent increasein firms producing electrical machinery and other products asso-ciated with higher-skilled jobs which typically employ more malelabor...
...tariff restrictions limit Caribbean eign investment in export manufacturing has been export-led industrialization to enclave assembly operintense...
...Most 6% in 1990 as state industrial policies favored foreign Caribbean countries also allow unrestricted profit investment in export manufacturing over domestic repatriation...
...These factors coupled with the pressures of the economic crisis heighten the woman's insecurity and her fear of challenging male dominance...
...can Republic differs consi Puerto Rican state policy is directed at containing and Rico...
...28 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON WOMEN The transfer payments, such as unemployment insurance and food stamps, which cushion the effects of poverty and unemployment in Puerto Rico are also not available in the Dominican Republic...
...In a survey of women workers in export manufacturing in the Dominican Republic conducted in 1981, 38% considered themselves to be the major economic provider...
...Puerto Rico has 1 them, before it was one...In that sense the woman is tage as a source of cheap better off...
...Hourly wages export manufactur- industries such as apparel continue to be a major source of female vary considerably ing as a way not only employment...
...Although the official rate of unemployment is about 20%, theactual economic activity rate is around 45...
...1 7 another man...
...Guerrero, Impacto Econ6mico de lasZonas Francas Industriales de Exportacibn en la RepiblicaDominicana (Sto...
...6 Although export-processing 37% of the firms zones are construct- installed between ed at public expense 1985 and 1990 are for export-manufac- Dominican-owned, turing plants, com- 68% of all firms in the plete with such free-trade zones are amenities as water, totally reliant on electricity and roads...
...These changes in the global economy have also contributed to the increasing marginalization of men and growing dependence on women's wages in the region...
...Thus, it is not only the increasing employment of women, but the decreasing employment of men that is making women major contributors to family income in both countries...
...Export manufacturing now constitutes the second most important source of urban employment for women after domestic service, and continues to grow with the increase in free-trade zones since 1980...
...When the my, which accelerat- woman isn't working, ed with the decline , she has to put up with in sugar production...
...4 Special tariff programs such as control can be achieved through the outright represitems 806.30 and 807 of the U.S...
...The increasing proportion of men in more highly qualified jobs in export manufacturing also demonstrates a continued pattern of gender stratification, despite the increased demand for female labor...
...1 8 Working women are becoming major economic contributors to the household...
...This article is adapted from her forthcoming book, The Myth of the Male Breadwinner: Women and Industrialization in the Caribbean (Westview Press...
...The public sector now constitutes the primary source of employ-ment for both sexes in Puerto Rico...
...But when she is MaleA mother and son in their kitchen in Villa San Miedo, Puerto Rico...
...In addition, women are working more because of the rising cost of living, and increasing unemployment and declining real wages among men, which make it necessary for both husband and wife to contribute to the household income...
...See Dauhajre et al, Impacto Econ6mico,p...
...This has contributed in both countries to a high rate of marital instability and female-headed households, leading to even greater burdens for women and higher levels of immiseration...
...Juana's situation is typical of that of many women workers in the free-trade zones-low wages, poor working conditions, lack of affordable, adequate child care, limited job alternatives, partners who offer no or limited assistance, and an increasingly high cost of living...
...Their authority in the home is derived from their increased economic contribution to the household, which has taken on major significance in the light of increased male unemployment and its Most women workers agree that paid employment has given them greater legitimacy to negotiate with their husbands, even though 80% of married Dominican women sampled in the 1981 survey still consider the man the head of the household...
...Export manufacturers prefer women workers, because they are cheaper to employ, less likely to unionize, and seem to have greater patience for the tedious, monotonous work in assembly operations.' This restructuring of the labor force has profound gender implications at the household level...
...Both higher educational levels and lower fertility levels contributed to an improvement in women's occupational profile and to their higher labor-force participation rates...
...creased the pressure on women to work in order to add to the household income...
...Domingo, D.R.: Fundaci6n Econ6mica y Desar-rollo, Inc., 1989...
...Domestic investment in the Dominican subsidies, and freedom from import duties on raw Republic has declined from 16% in the early 1980s to materials and machinery needed for production...
...Though poorly paid and offering few chances of upward mobility, these jobs have provided women workers with a weapon with which to challenge male dominance in the household...
...The 1991 data are drawn from a recent unpub-lished report on the national labor force by the Inter-AmericanDevelopment Bank, FUNDAPEC and CIECA (p...
...When a wocreased enrollment man works, men at higher educational think she is a little levels and men's ' too liberal, that they growing marginal- can't mistreat or ization in the econo- abuse her...
...No unions are operating in the workers Dominican free-trade zones, manufactu although they are not legally prohibited...
...Export manufacturing lessens the need to pay sufficient wages to develop the internal market required under import substitution...
...Governments have attempted to ficient generator of foreign exchange since they proencourage foreign investment by lifting trade barriers vide no linkages to the domestic economy except for and by offering tax holidays, subsidized credit, export low wages...
...Now it is both of cessful...
...1 2 While seen as subsidies to alternative sources of empl workers, these transfer payments also aid low-wage industries like apparel that do not pay an adequate wage and might otherwise leave the island because of wage increases or a shortage of cheap labor...
...XXVI, No...
...minimum wage declined 62.3% between 1984 and 1990...
...market forces to sustain its economy...
...Both repression and co-optaes of manufacturing...
...The morerecent Dominican migration to Puerto Rico is examined in J.Duany, ed., Los Dominicanos en Puerto Rico: Migraci6n en laSemi-Periferia (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Ediciones Hurac.n, Inc., 1990...
...Whoever gets wages an involved in unions here knows she will lose her job and will no longer cond work in the free-trade zone, because as you know the big fish eats the little fish," she says the manager told her when she and her co-workers were fired...
...6, 1989...
...control of wages and government saw A woman worker in a clothing factory in Puerto Rico...
...As in Puerto Rico, the majority of married women now maintain that they share household decisions with their partners, and say that men no longer have exclusive budgetary control...
...In 1986 I conducted in-depth interviews with a sub-sampleof women working in the garment industry in both countries...
...The real hourly ticipation rates...
...State economic policy has basically been implemented by a "predatory state" set up by the dictatorRafael Leonidas Trujillo, who ruled the country from 1930 to 1960...
...The earlier figures are drawn from Andres Dauhajre, E.Riley, R. Mena and J.A...
...7 U.S...
...which gives women a basis of resistance to male domFemale labor-force participation rates in the Domini- inance in the family...
...change...
...These social-support measures, in addition to ambitious government although both count programs in housing, education and health, helped to mation from an agr underwrite the costs of social reproduction for the . omy, the developm working class, as well as to contain class conflict...
...Although textiles and garments are the economic crisis, which hit most of the Caribbean excluded from the CBI, due to opposition from U.S...
...Contrary to global patterns, where most women who work in export manufacturing are young and single, over 75% of the women garment workers in my Puerto Rican sample are over 30 years old and two-thirds are married...
...manufacturers, but with a high in 1988 of $4.28 an hour in Puerto Rico also to improve the stagnant economies of Latin (where the federal minimum wage applies) to a low of America and the Caribbean, and to promote political $.55 an hour in the Dominican Republic...
...can Republic increased from 25.7% in 1970 to 35.5% As in Puerto Rico, the threat to male authority in in 1990.16 Several factors in the development process the household has contributed to an increase in favored this increase, including urbanization, the households headed by women, which reached 24% in growth of the tertiary sector, and the growth of export the Dominican Republic in 1984.19 One 38-year-old processing...
...The rate of consensual unions is much higher among Dominican than Puerto Rican women (twice as many Dominican women surveyed were in consensual unions than legally married), which increases the rate of marital instability...
...labor unions into these practices and their denuncia-tion of the job loss for U.S...
...enactment of President Reagan's Caribbean Basin Ini- Both labor and the state were further weakened by tiative (CBI...
...government support for export manufacturing that increases the vulnerability of workers in both in the Caribbean Basin was enhanced by the 1983 countries...
...The problem is that in both countries, women are being asked to assume increasing economic responsii r e f ic bility for their household because higher rates of labor-force participation for women have coincided with declining job opportunities for men, due both to changes in the economy and to women's need to generate additional household income...
...Since the recession of 1973-74, unemployment rates in Puerto Rico have hovered around 20%, and are higher for men than for women...
...They Male labor-force are machistas," she participation rates says...
...This total dependence on external investment and markets means that these export enclaves may be withdrawn at any time...
...It has also contributed to a decline of male labor-force participation...
...The Dominican Republic is incr Dominican state has forces to sustain its economy...
...This can be partially blamed on grew 307.4% between 1981 unions' neglect of women workers...
...the data are for semi-skilled labor inexport-processing industries.9...
...24REPORT ON WOMEN n recent years, spurred on by the debt crisis and led to self-sustained growth capable of generating growing unemployment, the competition among more domestic, capital-intensive forms of industrial Latin American and Caribbean countries for for- production...
...Migration peaked in the 1950s, and continued at high levels until 1970...
...2 (Sto...
...Differences in Dominican and Puerto Rican state policies also condition the impact of paid employment on women's status...
...It went through three stages, changing in focus from laborintensive early on to capital-intensive in the mid1960s, before a third stage of high-tech industrialization in the mid-1970s...
...Industrialization also led to a profound recomposi- early 1980s, when the Unit tion of the working class and, paradoxically, to a sugar quotas...
...many things from a Male unemploy- - man...
...into the labor force could not meet the economic wage areas brought about needs of many of Puerto Rico's poor...
...Operation Bootstrap itself tried to remedy the surplus labor problem since it was accompanied by a program of government-sponsored migration to the United States, principally farm labor...
...Agency for In the Caribbean, International Devel- the state's principal opment (U.S.AID) role in export manumade export manu- facturing is to create a facturing a key = favorable climate for development strategy d foreign investment throughout Latin through investment America and the z incentives and the Caribbean...
...in the mid-1970s and 1980s...
...They also have more children, which increases their dependence on male wages...
...At the same time, the female population supervisor in the free-trade zones who now lives was becoming more alone, although she employable, as a has had eight chilresult of a rise in dren in three conseneducational levels sual unions, says she (higher than those of would not quit workmen), and a marked ing, even if she found decline in fertility...
...This economic restructuring makes U.S...
...rather than through union organizing...
...The majority of married women in my sample maintain that they share household decisions with their husband, and that husbands no longer have exclusive budgetary control, as was common when the man was the sole breadwinner...
...Although the industrialization program was initially designed to provide employment to men displaced from agricultural employment, women became the primary labor force in the laborintensive factories such as apparel and food-processing that were attracted to the island in the first stage...
...Workers are simply fired and unionized blacklisted with other plants if any little supp union activity is detected...
...89-102...
...territory...
...5 U.S...
...The lack of linkages to the domestic economy in all areas but wages has failed to stimulate selfn women generating growth capable of creating better jobs for women and men...
...5,No...
...continued to serve the interests of the agrarian and industrial elite, with little attention to the needs of the poor...
...The enclave nature of export manufacturing in the Caribbean thus has negative social consequences for the economy as a whole and for women and their households in particular...
...market women increased from 25.3 to 32.2% during this same period, as women were absorbed into export manufacturing, the service industry, and the public sector...
...These difficult circumstances are the result of recent macroeconomic changes...
...They think that declined 10% over if the woman works, the same period, she will rule too reflecting both in- much...
...For the 1960 figure, see Clara Baez, La Subordinaci6n Social dela Mujer Dominicana en Cifras (Santo Domingo, D.R.: Direcci6nGeneral de Promoci6n de la MujerANSTRAW, 1985...
...Men, on the other hand, are increasingly marginalized...
...This special status assures Puerto Rico free access to the U.S...
...The Caribbean Basin has historically depended upon agricultural exports such as sugar, coffee and bananas...
...Despite sev ment Workers' Union (ILGWU) as a company union mum wage, the real hour that does little to defend their interests or invite rank- Dominican Republic decli and-file participation...
...market, but restricts the range of permissible economic and political activity, and makes the economy very dependent on federal transfer payments to sustain an increasingly impoverished population...
...The number of households headed by women has also increased, reaching 19% in 1980...
...The economic crisis has labor, the United States granted special import quotas made Caribbean countries even more dependent on to certain Caribbean countries through the Guaranteed export promotion to address the decline in the balance Access Levels (GALS) program, sometimes referred of payments, to service their debts, and to reduce to as 807A...
...Dominicans started migrating to New York City in the 1960s, andin 1990 numbered nearly 900,000 according to Annette Fuentes,"Elusive Unity in La Gran Manzana" in NACLA Report on theAmericas, Vol...
...5. Carmen Deere and Edwin Melendez provide a critical analysis ofthe limited benefits of export growth in the Dominican Republicin "When Export Growth is not Enough: U.S Trade Policy andCaribbean Basin Economic Recovery," Caribbean Affairs, Vol...
...The Dominican Republic has greater political autonomy, but is increasingly dependent on U.S...
...I have to work, either in the zone or in a private home (as a domestic)," Juana says...
...See Keith Bradsher, NewYork Times, October 4, 1992, p. 5. 4. For a fuller discussion of the impact of the economic crisis andeconomic restructuring on the Caribbean, see Carmen DianaDeere, Peggy Antrobus, Lynn Bolles, Edwin Mel6ndez, PeterPhillips, Marcia Rivera and Helen Safa, In the Shadows of theSun: Caribbean Development Alternatives and U.S...
...Dominican women also have not been working as long and enjoy less protection on the job...
...on the contrary, the external market demand for export manufacturing requires the maximum reduction of production costs, principally wages, in order to compete effectively on the international level...
...Complaints of mistreatment or unjust dismissal that women workers have taken to the Ministry of Labor have generally been rejected in favor of management...
...Though poorly paid and offering few chances of upward mobility, jobs in export manufacturing have provided women workers in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico a weapon with which to challenge male dominance in the household...
...In 1992, 67% of firms in the Dominican free trade zones werestill in the textile industry...
...Industrializ, weakening of the labor movement...
...The union is primarily interest- and 1990.14 The economic c ed in containing worker demands in order to retard els of unemployment, inf nts to cheaper wage areas , however, been very sucost its comparative advanlabor to Mexico and other h also offer tax incentives .ompetition from cheaper a sharp decline in the Puer. This decline particularly s who have worked in the ears or more, and have no oyment...
...They have not eral years in the garment industry...
...8 & 12...
...3. This U.S.AID policy of financing and advertising free-trade zoneshas recently come under sharp attack and been subjected tosome restrictions by the U.S...
...6. FUNDAPEC, p. 3. 7. FUNDAPEC, pp...
...2. The household-level data presented here are based on a surveyof 157 women workers in three Puerto Rican garment plants con-ducted by the author in 1980, and a survey of 231 women work-ers in the three oldest export-processing zones of the DominicanRepublic in 1981, conducted by Centro de Investigaci6n para laAcci6n Femenina (CIPAF), a private Dominican women's researchcenter...
...2 Men's authority in the household has declined as a consequence...
...The increased incorporation of women into the industrial labor force, although in dead-end, low-paid jobs, has given more economic responsibility in the household to women in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, the two countries I will focus on in this article...
...I cannot be financially dependent on my husband because he doesn't earn enough to help my family and to help me here at home...
...Activity rates refer to the percentage of economically activewomen or men as a percentage of the total population over acertain age (10 years in the Dominican Republic, and 16 years inPuerto Rico) of either sex...
...The primary beneficiary of this pattern of export enclaves is the United States, which has promoted this strategy in Mexico and throughout the Caribbean Basin...
...3 The U.S...
...Export-led industrialization has intensified dependence on the United States while failing to generate self-sustained growth...
...As of March, 1992, 135,000 workers were employed in 23 free-trade zones in various regions of the country...
...ries underwent a transforarian to an industrial econent process in the Dominiderably from that of Puerto ,ublic remained dependent rincipally sugar, until the ed States drastically cut its ition started much later in than in Puerto Rico...
...12 1981-83 data drawn from Richard Weisskoff, Factories and FoodStamps: The Puerto Rican Model of Development (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), p. 66...
...In general, more egalitarian relationships seem to be found among couples who are both working, are better educated, have lived in the city longer, did not get married very young, and are legally married rather than living in consensual union...
...See Consejo Nacional de Zonas Fran-cas, "Cantidad de Empresas," 1992...
...Apparel imports to the United States growing unemployment...
...VOL XXVII, No 1 JULY/AuGusT 1993 27REPORT ON WOMEN This, in turn, led to increased migration from the debilitating impact on a man's ability to be the sole Dominican Republic to the United States and also to breadwinner...
...Congress as a result of investiga-tions of U.S...
...As in the United States, older women displaced from their jobs due to relocation are not entitled to a union pension unless they are over 62 years old and have worked at least 10 years in the garment industry...
...State policy toward export-led industrialization differs somewhat in Puerto Rico because of its continued colonial status as a U.S...
...As a result, to Rican garment industry more and more families depend on transfer payments hurt older women worker such as social security and food stamps, which reach garment industry for 20 y over half the population...
...These export enclaves are an increasingly inefexport manufacturing...
...2 0 These jobs, however, are still heavily dependent on exports as well as foreign investment and inputs...
...n export The present pattern of export "ing are not enclaves places additional burdens on women while marginalizing men...
...Labor-intensive labor...
...This is particularly the case in Puerto Rico, where the man's role as principal breadwinner has been considerably weakened by prolonged unemployment, migration, and increasing rates of female labor-force participation...
...Eighteen firms operated outsideindustrial parks as special free-trade zones...
...For the 1991figure, see Nelson Ramirez, "Nuevos Hallazgos sobre Fuerza Lab-oral y Migraciones" in Poblaci6n y Desarrollo, No...
...Isis Duarte, Clara Baez, Carmen J. Gomez, and Marina Ariza,Poblacion y Condicidn de la Mujer en Rep0blica Dominicana (Sto.Domingo, D.R.: Instituto de Estudios de Poblaci6n y Desarrollo,Estudio no...
...She must make this money stretch to cover food, rent, and the baby-sitter's wage as well as her own expenses such as transportation and lunch...
...The Dominican Rep co-opting the labor movement rather than repressing on agricultural exports, p it...
...between countries, to provide cost benefits to U.S...
...The state has played a major role in fostering ations...
...The 1991 figures are inflated becausethey include women and men willing to work, but not necessarilyactively seeking employment...
...2 Despite elections and lip service to increasing democra- Dominican workers at an electronics tic participation, the zone...
...Dept...
...firms more competitive in the international market by reducing their labor costs...
...Both the male andfemale activity rates are drawn from the P.R...
...imported inputs for In the 1980s, the production...
...In fact, the availability of cheap labor appears to be the prime determining factor for foreign investment...
...The militant labor the Dominican Republic union among sugar cane workers was sapped of its focused largely on import strength by the decline of the sugar industry and the sive and rapid expansion increasing fragmentation and diversification of the the 1980s, which resulted la industrial labor force...
...By providing alternative or supplementary sources of income, transfer payments further reduce a woman's dependence on a male wage, and also contribute to declining, male labor-force par- Payday at a free-trade zone in the Dominican Republic...
...Today the region's economies have undergone a profound restructuring away from these traditional commodities toward export manufacturing...
...Domin-go, D.R.: Profamilia, 1992...
...Because a person who works has rights...Now her husband is obliged to let her give 26NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 26REPORT ON WOMEN orders, because she is contributing," says a divorced the flight of garment plain mother of teen-age children who has worked for sev- elsewhere...
...of Labor andHuman Resources, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Serie Histori-co del Empleo, Desempleo y Grupo Trabajador en Puerto Rico,1991...
...She supports her three children on her weekly salary of $20...
...Caribbean countries, whic However, the increasing incorporation of women and even lower wages...
...BY HELEN I. SAFA uana Santana works in the free-trade zone of La Romana in the Dominican Republic...
...This information, provided by the National Council of ExportFree-Trade Zones, includes 10 privately operated free-tradezones, 11 administered by the Industrial Development Corpora-tion, and two administered by the State Sugar Council (on for-mer state-owned sugar mills...
...Certainly export manufacturing has provided women with an important source of employment at a time when the economic crisis urgently requires households to seek additional sources of income...
...corporations located in Puerto Rico pay no federal income tax...
...Thepercentage of women employed has dropped from about 70%in the 1980s to 58% in 1990...
...The proportion of unionized the cost of labor due to th workers in Puerto Rico as a whole dropped from 20% rency devaluation...
...See "Cantidad deEmpresas Operando en las Diferentes Zonas Francas del Pals amarzo de 1992" (Santo Domingo, D.R.: Consejo Nacional deZonas Francas de Exportaci6n, Secretaria de Estado de Industria yComercio, 1992...
...Her husband earns some money driving a taxi (ptiblico) owned by his family, but like many of the men living with the women workers in the free-trade zones, he does not have a steady job...
...Special industry...
...tion lead to a weak and fragmented labor movement U.S...
...Policy (Boul-der: Westview Press, 1990...
...However, the changes are less marked than in Puerto Rico because the Dominican women workers in export manufacturing are younger with young children to support...
...1 3 unemployment reached ab Though unionized, most women garment workers 1990, and continues to be in my sample regarded the International Ladies Gar- than for men...
...The New Women Workers: Does Money Equal Power...
...Some of this surplus labor was absorbed in services and particularly in public administration...
...Labor is also weakened industrialization in the Dominican Republic has not by structural-adjustment measures which generally VOL XXVI I, No 1 JULY/AUGUST 1993 25 VOL XXVII, No 1 JULY/AUGUST 1993 25REPORT ON WOMEN result in higher levels of unemployment and lower real wages...
...Tariff Codes and the sion or prohibition of unions in free-trade zones, as in Generalized System of Preferences were instituted to the Dominican Republic, or through co-optation of promote the relocation abroad of labor-intensive phas- labor, as in Puerto Rico...
...Carmen Julia Gomez explains the increase in Dominican female-headed household in La Problemitica de las Jefas del Hogar (Sto.Domingo, D. R.: CIPAF, 1990), p. 27...
...While manufacturing output more than tripled from 1950 to 1980, this growth still could not offset the fa ea enormous declines in agriculture over this period...
...Most husbands now accept that their wives work and no longer consider it a threat to their authority, because they realize it is impossible to live on a single wage...
...This state of affairs is underlined by the current fear in the Caribbean that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will lead many foreign firms to leave the Caribbean and go to Mexico...
...Discontent is expressed in high turnover or eventual withdrawal from the labor force, Dominic...
...In a sample survey of Puerto Rican garment workers I conducted in 1980, 90% said it was easier for a woman than for a man to find a job...
...Acomplete analysis of this data, together with a comparison ofCuban women textile workers, will be forthcoming in Safa, TheMyth of the Male Breadwinner: Women and Industrialization inthe Caribbean ( Boulder: Westview Press...
...They in 1970 to 6% in 1988...
...Palmira Rios examines thechanging gender composition of Puerto Rico's manufacturingsector through 1980 in "Export-Oriented Industrialization and theDemand for Female Labor: Puerto Rican Women in the Manufac-turing Sector, 1952-1980" in Edwin and Edgardo Melsndez,Colonial Dilemma: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary PuertoRico (Boston: South End Press, 1993), pp...
...NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Helen i. Safa is professor of anthropology and Latin American Studies at the Center for Latin American Studies of the University of Florida...
...nd receive The change in the industrial comport from the sition of these enclaves as they move away from garment firms to nt in their more highly skilled jobs in electronics and other capital-intensive prod- or better ucts appears to have increased the I working proportion of men employed in export manufacturing in the tions...
...tariff restrictions help explain why export-led backs in government services...
...1 (1992...
...I am grateful to DaleMathews for providing me with a copy of this report...
...While each was different in emphasis, no one stage eclipsed the other, so that labor-intensive industries such as apparel continued to be the major source of female employment in manufacturing in the 1980s...
...Has the growth of export manufacturing benefited women workers in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico...
...Carlos A. Santiago-Rivera presents a fuller discussion of theimpact of economic restructuring on the Puerto Rican labormovement in "The Puerto Rican Labor Movement in the 1990's"in Edwin and Edgardo Mel6ndez, Colonial Dilemma: Critical Per-spectives on Contemporary Puerto Rico (Boston: South End Press,1993), p. 149...
...It substitution until the masof export manufacturing in irgely from the reduction in e economic crisis and curgh manufacturing exports and 1988 to $502.1 million, out 27% between 1985 and much higher for women eral increases in the minily minimum wage in the ined 62.3% between 1984 crisis resulted in higher levlation and cost of living...
...In short, it is not simply a question of Puerto Rico.15 whether women are employed or not, but the imporExport manufacturing is attracted by the abundance tance of their contribution to the household economy, of low-cost female labor in the Dominican Republic...
...2 (1991), and in S. Grasmuck and P. Pessar, Between Two Islands: Dominican International Migra-tion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991...
...I will hence-forth refer to the report as FUNDAPEC...
...FUNDAPEC, p. 8. In 1987 the World Bank estimated that theaverage monthly salary in the Dominican free-trade zones wasDR$321 (about US$92...
...I am grateful to Luz del Alba de Aceve-do for providing me with this data as well as many other helpfulinsights...
...8. See Deere et al, in the Shadows of the Sun, p. 14 9. Hourly wagesinclude fringe benefits...
...Women working, then things ment, lower wages, have greater clout at home as a result of their increased contribution to working, then things and inflation in- household income...
...1. However, with the decline in traditional sectors of male employ-ment such as agriculture and construction, men are beginning towork in the Dominican free-trade zones in greater numbers...
Vol. 27 • July 1993 • No. 1
