S/R #10

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Synthesis: Labor in just about every area is highly gendered, and jobs held by mostly women are generally lower-paying, devalued occupations. Furthermore, women in generally male-occupied jobs are paid much less and discouraged to advance, where-as men are often favored in many jobs that are usually held by women, and encouraged to advance.

Response: Throughout this week, I kept on thinking about what I have heard many people say, and many people believe- essentially, "women already have their rights, what is all the fuss about?" Our readings this week showed how clearly this is not the case. While many women are working, the jobs held by many women are significantly low-paying; "An Overview of Women and Work" says that 21% of women working full-time in 1994 earned less than $13,800 in a year- a percentage that escalates when looking at particular groups of women such as Latinas. Indeed, the article says that women of color are "concentrated in the lowest-paying jobs, including domestic workers, nurses' aides, an child-care workers". Reading "For Immigrant Maids, Not A Job but Servitude" as well as watching "Maid in America" showed this relationship very clearly. The article quote Jennifer Gordon, saying "[employers] don't think they have any obligation to pay minimum wages, but they say they treat her like family". I agreed with a point brought up in class that by treating these maids like "family", what is implied is that it is acceptable for them to stay long hours and do extra chores, because of their supposed 'familial' relationship. I'd like to add that these pathetic wages may be "excused" in the employers minds in that family does this for free- then any wages are really just a formality of sorts. Ironically then, if it is true that "family" just takes care of each other, I didn't see any of the employers doing anything particularly caring for the domesticas that worked for them!
Furthermore, "women's" jobs are low-paying because they are not valued in our society- a direct relationship, in my mind, to the fact that these jobs are often associated with "women's work" or the private sphere- working with children, families, and homes. Similar to the situation I illustrated previously in regard to the domesticas, since many of these jobs could be seen as extensions of what women are expected to do with their lives anyway, society may view paying women for this work unnecessary. This also goes along with the idea that these jobs are "unskilled"- which is certainly not the case. Many of these jobs take a great deal of skill- and some jobs, like house cleaning, may not challenge and stimulate the employee. One woman in "Maid in America" hoped to be an accountant in America with her Mexican accounting degree, but was forced to do cleaning work when her degree did not count in the States. The supposedly "unskilled" job of cleaning was very hard on her because it did not challenge and excite her- this low paid, 'easy' job was much more difficult to perform than accounting, yet she was paid a fraction of what she would make as an accountant.
Women being pushed into "unskilled" tasks that result in enormous mental strain also appeared in many other readings, such as "Life on the Global Assembly Line" and "Nike's Business". The first article mentioned that "eighty to 90 percent of the low-skilled assembly jobs that go to the Third World are performed by women...", in factories that expose women to awful conditions that seriously jeopardize their health and overwork the employees to the extreme. The idea that this is a 'low-skilled' job completely overlooks the huge amount of stress it goes along with, and pays microscopically. This situation is the ultimate example of kyriarchy; incredibly poor Third World women slave away under the less poor Third World male factory administrators who in turn exploit as much work as possible from the women to satisfy their rich First World company executives encouraged by a free trade-oriented government.
A sad but hopeful bit of information mentioned in both the "Global Assembly line" article and "...Women and Work" was the lack, but the power, of unions and organization among female workers. By empowering women through community and identity is a hugely important thing that should be encouraged by activists and government. Women should not be fired (or killed!) for organizing or protesting working conditions anywhere in the world, as clearly needs to be done.