8th of March
Women across the world have different statuses, in different cast systems [of sorts]. What may be demeaning in the western culture maybe desired and status evaluating to others. Wealth, value and entitlement to women mean very different things in diverse societies. Even the value of human rights and what it connotes is distinct in diverse cultures. Human rights and individuality in the west is the basis and foundation for our thinking in our current hegemonic world. It’s a powerful rhetoric that it is considered self-evident in the west. Other cultures and countries are not as moralistically polarized as the west as to think issues and concepts –in a general sense– are self-evident. Many cultures, unlike the USA’s, accept a perceived great amount of gray space in their moralistic thinking’s. I think this is largely due to the fact that wealthy countries such as the US can afford to be “moral”. Simply said, being an individual, being alone and having “human rights” is not of the utmost priority (in the western sense) to many cultures and communities across the world when it comes to the needs and “betterment” of the accumulative masses.
And while in the old world and in the villages of traditions long since ancient, this might have held true–but no longer. The world is getting smaller and smaller. Peoples and tribes once isolated are now embroiled in a recent phenomenon: Globalization. Values and commercialism, images and media—while being fed to an ever critical audience 1 eventually results with a generation of consumers anesthetized to previously held sensibilities.
For instance, when reading the case studies of women from the West Indies their culture was very open to the idea of women traveling abroad. In Sri Lanka that was not so much the case. There may very well be a thousand items, religious, cultural events that shape these two distinctive attitudes; one the west indies and the other from the east indies, and nor do I have the time, space, nor frankly, the knowledge to list them—but I do have some hypothesis’s.
It is universally acknowledged that there are immense negatives affects globalization has on women. 70% of the world’s poor are women. Victimized and disenfranchised women are often taken advantage of. They are often valued less than males and less likely to receive an education and if in work more likely to be paid less despite the needs and essentials are equal and may exceed men’s. This is often the situation with women that in dire situations seek to help dependents or themselves excel in a growing and in a exacerbated materialistic intrinsic world.
For example, in the West Indies women have often migrated to American cities seeking work as nannies. That it is an accepted norm in their culture. Unlike a general metropolitan-career-women stance, West Indies culture considers the care taking of children to be an honor. By their metropolitan counterparts they are generally seen as trusted but unimpressive. As result, employers may thoughtlessly asked nannies to do overtime not realizing she may have to return to her own family by a certain time in the day.2
The option of bringing family along is certainly a luxury most Sri Lankan and other migrants alike do not have. It may have to do with female migrant labor being a relatively recent trend in more eastern countries with less proximity to the USA and other western first country cities. Sri Lankan women are known to often migrant to rich Arab gulf countries looking for labor as domestic servants and the like. Both stereotypes at home and abroad (in the Middle East) assume that men are the breadwinners. Thus men at home are known to squander earnings receive by women and thus disvaluing the effort and money their women have earned. They blame loneliness and alcohol for their “macho” misbehavior. Quite the opposite reaction comes from the hosting Arabs from the same stereotype. They do not excuse the native male counterparts of migrants but rather blame them. “‘Arab people say that Sri Lankan men must be ‘donkey’ because they send their wives abroad.’”3 ‘Donkey’ as explained by Michele Gamburd implies the inability of men to provide for their families and womenfolk (finically and sexually). What struck me though, was that despite the attention given to men using the pretext of absent womenfolk to act imprudent Gamburd writes: “ Pradeep, an articulate young man, bounced his two-year-son on his knee and replied that he knew and trusted his wife [concerning possible sexual promiscuity of migrant workers].”4 The picture painted is reminiscent of the story of Penelope, the epitome of the stereotype of a faithful and dutiful wife, in the Greek epic poem the Odyssey. I hope and speculate this instance is to inadvertently hint at slowly changing attitudes towards progressive and fruitful norms.
In the Philippines it seems the government suffers from schizophrenia. Government and media try to wrongly 5 vilify women forced to work abroad for the betterment of families; charging them with abandoning and the causation of dysfunctional children. 6 As a result of this misinformation there is a stigma against female migrant workers and thus consequential efforts in legislation to undercut the amount going abroad despite that this particular working block that brings a huge amount of money into the country. Men in this case are also prone to work away from home. 7
Probably the most alienating although understandable “migrant” account is of the Dominican sex workers that sought out “walking visas”.8 Women from the lowest socioeconomic backgrounds sought an escape from their poor lives by looking through sex work a man from the first world. Women often had the illusion that these men would lead them to freedom under the impression educated and comparatively wealthy white males are less abusive then their native counterparts. This is not true. In fact, people who migrant or who are immigrants from another country and are taken by their male counterparts to their home country are often treated worse because their lack of protection, commutative abilities and status in an alien country is not up to par with native residents. Likewise, domestic violence is just as oft occurring in poor, immigrant and uneducated communities as it is in traditional suburbia and wealthy areas within the US.
The most harrowing tale female migrant workers are those that don’t need a border to cross: sex slaves. In Thailand there is an estimated 1 million sex-slaves.9 The government does little because sex-tourists bring in so much money while several recent studies have shown that around 80-89% of Thai men have had intercourse with a prostitute. Where 10-40% of married men go to prostitutes as well, seeing that their wives much rather have their husbands in a non-committal relationship then take a mistress or a second wife. As for the supply of females they often come from the northern provinces of Thailand where there are many poor farmers, a strong contrast to the booming metropolitan areas in the center of the country. As prices for basic needs grew, agricultural returns where held down by the government to ensure cheap food. Sometimes families under tight economic strain are forced to sell their daughters while others (up to 2/3s) sell their daughters despite the extra hand needed because they desire a TV set.10 Other’s are fooled by local political/ trusted/ wealthy/ religious leaders in their communities thinking their girls will work in factories or will get an education. Instead these women and girls are then abducted raped, beaten, threaten with more violence as they are forced into servicing customers without any health care being provided. If contracted AIDS (a very rational fear) they are thrown out into the street to starve and waste away; others return to their home village to die.
As for the women who work in the maquiladoras11 just a border away, it is interesting to speculate the feminization of labor. There are factories called maquiladoras in northern Mexico that only hire women, often these women are working to support families and in turn the breadwinners. Dreams and disappointments from the male gender… woman who had been forced by poverty to work and be brave in a world, deemed by culture and mentality, not originally their own.
Life is ruled by necessities and human nature. With such commonalties of the migrant force and the feminization of labor occurring across racial, lingualistic, gender, national, and religious divides I cannot help but conclude two suppositions of human nature, virtually the same but with very different conations: greed and aspiration.
Women do not want to be exploited and in many a sense while to the affluent work is liberating and power-gaining, to the poor work is oppression. Hobbes is who stated that [hu]man does not desire liberty but rather security. So I would probably conclude in the face of realities and necessities that guaranteeing security for women whether in the workplace or in the home would be the utmost priority. And although often seen as a dichotomy these too definitions (security and freedom) in the real world beget each other and power is a result of these relationship which in turn fuels the security and freedom of human beings. As Kevin Bales puts so surprisingly optimistically in the middle of his disturbing account of sex-slaves in Thailand, “The United States then [1890s] faced many of the problems confronting Thailand today… Discussion with Thais about… sex slavery often end with… ‘the problem is just too big’… Yet the social and economic underpinning of slavery in Thailand are always changing…”12 I can only hope that through this abuse of female rights that women gain some autonomy of their lives and in their socialites and greater social sphere if not now in the long run, inshAllah, God-willing.
1 Tomlinson, “Cultural imperialism”
2 Colen, “ ‘Like a Mother to Them’: Stratified Reproduction and West Indian Childcare Workers and Employers in New York” in Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction
3 Gamburd, “Breadwinner No More”
4 Gamburd, “Breadwinner No More”.
5 Parrenas, “The Care Crisis in the Philippines”.
6 Parrenas, “The Care Crisis in the Philippines”.
7 Brennan, “Selling Sex for Visas: Sex Tourism as a Stepping Stone to International Migration”.
8 Brennan, “Selling Sex for Visas: Sex Tourism as a Stepping Stone to International Migration”.
9 Bales, “Because She Looks Like a Child”.
10 “Caught in Modern Slavery: Tourism and Child Prostitution in Thailand,” Country report Summary prepared by Sudarat Sereewat-Srisang for Ecumenical Consultation held in Chiang Mai in May 1990.
11 Fernandez-Kelly, “Maquiladoras: The View from the Inside” in The Women, Gender and Development Reader.
12 Bales, “Because She Looks Like a Child”.
