Global Labor: More Than the Sum of Their Parts

Within the last six months, I have learned that it is impossible-lest you be truly close-minded-to begin to make an honest attempt to understand the world I live in (be it on a local, national, or global scale) without taking the time and effort to look at those inhabiting these places with an intersectional point of view. The phrase "We are all more than the sum of our parts." plays over and over in my mind like the repeated bits of song piped through speakers when the vinyl was scratched on records as a little kid. There is no one thing about me that makes me fully unique as an individual. And if that can be said of myself, then why would the same truth not apply to those around me and indeed, every single person in this world?
The commonality amongst many of the workers in all of the pieces is that the majority of the third world labor force are women of color. Most prominent of these are the Hispanic women being over-worked and under paid in the maquiladoras along the U.S.-Mexican border in cities such as Juarez. But they are also those being mistreated by poor working conditions in countries such as Jamaica, China, Canada, and Indonesia. They work ungodly hours in jobs that are more or less deemed beneath any task a man should be doing. "...it is believed that women can endure "monotonous" tasks, garment work is viewed as "women's" work, women are believed to be more compliant and less likely to complain, mothers "need" their jobs, women make better "part time" or temporary employees." (Levis Whirlwind Tour). They can be fired for trying to organize unionization. In a cruelty that shows major prejudice against women, many of these workers are required to take pregnancy tests in order to prove to the company that they won't hinder their profits. On page 467 of "Sex Discrimination on the Maquiladoras", we are told, "Absence of pregnancy has become a condition of employment in most of the factories in the zone, the maquiladoras, which employ a total of half a million workers, 70 percent of whom are women, and earn the Mexican state $20 million in export income...Keeping costs down is precisely the reason companies insist on the test, which is contrary to Mexican law and international conventions."
Most disturbing to me was the way that these women and their children were treated after being brutally raped and/or murdered. They get labeled as women of questionable morals or explained away as victims of organ-trafficking or snuff films. "Juarez, Mexico: since 1993 over 400 women maquila workers have been raped, tortured, and then murdered. Claims to justify their murders: they were prostitutes, they shouldn't be out in the public sphere, they were wearing revealing clothing, and/or they travel late at night." (Levis Whirlwind Tour) The perpetrators that commit these atrocities against women are never caught. And when someone who has violated innocent children whom the mother [out of necessity] has left with them, their confession as to why they sexually abused their young charge is utterly chilling, to say the least:

"May 17, Lomas De Zambo Said, "she leave her children to me because I am now without work. She should know how tempted, and no right has to anger with me when she is not there." (Kirshner,Ciudad Juarez)

It is important to note, in looking at a complete view of intersectionality, that while women and children are often given the short-sheet of things in so many different places, men are not completely exempt from being gendered and thought of as "less". True, we find that the majority of non-major "community", aka "conventional" growers of produce who choose to grow their crops and sell them in their local farmers' markets are still women, men make up a portion of those working the earth for production and profit, but they are viewed as "less" because they do not fit into the corporate model of trying to feed the world. "...small farmers, male and female, are feminized. They are other to economic man...Not tough enough for the competitive real world." (McMahon, pg. 483).
As a descendent of generations of struggling farmers, I really wish that I could say that I had some idea of a way to even begin to make the living and working conditions better for the people that we've been learning about. Do we boycott the companies making the multi-million dollar contracts and completely quit buying the products that these workers are forced to produce for pathetic wages? I just honestly don't see the consumerism stopping. So what are our alternatives? We must seek out, using the tool of intersectionality, ways to benefit those not just in our own nation, but worldwide. If we only seek to help one particular group, chances are that in the end, we potentially stand to not really help anyone.