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Although Mexico's Border Industrialization Program (BIP) was formulated to relieve unemployment in northern cities, critics claim that it has not served this end. The main reason for this failure, many maintain, is that unemployment in the North, as in the nation as a whole, is a male problem. Yet, women constitute the bulk of the BIP labor force. This paper employs aggregate data on men's and women's labor force participation to demonstrate that this claim is based on several inaccurate assumptions. Average unemployment rates for the Northern region, as for the nation as a whole, are higher among women than men of comparable ages. Joblessness is especially pronounced among younger women, that sector of the labor force from which the majority of BIP workers are recruited. The program does not appear to have enhanced women's labor market situation relative to men's; rather, the same conditions which weaken women's employment status in other parts of Mexico also operate in the North, despite any job opportunities the program might offer. This essay draws upon propositions from Marxist-feminist theory to interpret these empirical trends.
The emergence of global assembly plants is closely linked to the creation of a global female industrial labor force. Women and Work in Mexico's Maquiladoras examines this larger process in Mexico, where--despite a century of industrialization and a tradition of well-paid, highly organized, male workers--the maquiladora factories have turned to predominantly female labor. Exploring this dramatic shift, this book convincingly demonstrates how gender restructuring in workplaces and households has become a crucial element in the reorientation of Mexican development. The author compares Mexico's new industrial system with its historical antecedent and documents federal policy changes that have resulted in distinct patterns of gender, unionization, household form, and social welfare. Rich in ethnographic detail, the book uses the voices of workers themselves to provide an intimate look at how daily lives have been transformed--in ways that could not have been foreseen--by the national and international processes shaping the country's industrial transition.
On the basis of systematic research and personal experience, For We Are Sold, I and My People uncovers some of the social costs of modern production. Maria Patricia Fernandez-Kelly peels off the labels--"Made in Taiwan," "Assembled in Mexico"--and the trade names--RCA, Sony, General Motors, United Technologies, General Electric, Mattel, Chrysler, American Hospital Supply--to reveal the hidden human dimensions of present-day multinational manufacturing procedures. Focusing on Cuidad Juarez, located at the United States-Mexican border, Fernandez-Kelly examines the reality of maquiladoras, the hundreds of assembly plants that since the 1960s have been used by the Mexican government as part of its development strategy. Most maquiladoras function as subsidiaries of large U.S.-based corporations and a majority of the employees are women. Drawing from current knowledge in political economy and anthropology, this study focuses on one common denominator of the international division of labor--a growing proletariat of Third World women exploited by what some experts are calling "the global assembly line."
Published originally as La flor mas bella de la maquiladora, this beautifully written book is based on interviews the author conducted with more than fifty Mexican women who work in the assembly plants along the U.S.-Mexico border. A descriptive analytic study conducted in the late 1970s, the book uses compelling testimonials to detail the struggles these women face. The experiences of women in maquiladoras are attracting increasing attention from scholars, especially in the context of ongoing Mexican migration to the country's northern frontier and in light of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This book is among the earliest accounts of the physical and psychological toll exacted from the women who labor in these plants. Iglesias Prieto captures the idioms of these working women so that they emerge as dynamic individuals, young and articulate personalities, inexorably engaged in the daily struggle to change the fundamental conditions of their exploitation.
The foreign export-processing industry is a global phenomenon, with factories known as maquiladoras in Mexico and Central America. While maquiladoras have gone through second- and third-generation production models, with corresponding research literature from business perspectives, the social analyses of these models and 'Mature Maquilization's' effects on health, the environment, infrastructure, and gender inequalities have not yet been adequately addressed. Kathryn Kopinak's fine edited collection is a long-overdue, welcome addition to this gap in the literature. Drawing together a distinguished and committed group of scholars from North America, The Social Costs of Industrial Growth in Mexico provides careful and methodical knowledge on extensive third-generation social costs, with few benefits for workers' abilities to live healthy lives in which they enjoy fruits of their hard labor.