Profiting from Inequality

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to remain attractive and keep TNC’s interested in relocating to Mexico the Peso was devalued and regulated to insure that the TNC’s would profit and would come into Mexico and build which in turn would provide labour (Cobos, 1993). Such labour may be cheap due to low wages, averaging 12 dollars a day (Jorgenson & Kick, 2006), flexibility (easily hired and fired), or higher than average productivity at a given wage. Exploitation for profit is also known as capitalism. Capitalism takes advantage of pre-existing patriarchal relations to create a gender-stratified labour force (gendered division of labour), in which women are confined to a narrow range of jobs, many of which are viewed as an extension of their domestic roles (Tiano, 1994).

Women, because of prevailing gender regimes, are the cheap labour force, subject to “super-exploitation” transnational and national corporations in Mexico utilize a specific form of patriarchy, identified as “private patriarchy which is the exploitation of the labour of subcontracted home workers who perform piecework of a variety of types for capitalist enterprises (Wilson, 2002). Most benefits go to the core-based TNC’s who are in control of the production and marketing of products and the profits of their sales while Mexico ends up bearing the social costs. “Losses within Mexico are distributed in an unequal fashion; some groups (especially the state and local capital) are able to capture some of the benefits and other groups (especially those marginalized including maquiladora workers) bear the cost” (Jorgenson & Kick, 2006, p.143).

Men are often viewed as the alpha dog, the strong, the leader this is how society has constructed men to be viewed as, while women are often considered the weaker sex. This inequality and imbalance between the two sexes is often times the grounds for battle and debate between feminist scholars and individuals who hold fast onto other ideologies which are in agreeance with the aforementioned. The concept of gender relations has always been an issue that surfaces in many different aspects of social life i.e. work, education, religion etc. In the corporate world men have generally secured the top executive positions and have assumed the role as leader while women work to fight their way up the corporate ladder. Although women are the majority of the employee’s in the maquiladoras the owners and many of the supervisors in these plants are men. Men are normally not in the lower ranks of power when they are hired into maquiladoras, they usually hold positions of power. This maintains women at a low level of control and keeps women restricted in terms of what type of labour they can participate in. Instead of utilising unemployed males maquiladoras have aimed at recruiting single women between the ages of 16-24 with only primary level education; the hiring of women while it has generated employment has failed to offer even a partial solution to the problem of unemployment and underemployment in the northern border region (Prieto, 1997). This leaves men displaced; the women who are seen as better suited to work in the maquiladoras which is still highly dominated by assembly line work have few positions available for them which is often just management of the heavy machinery (Prieto, 1997). If they are not already in top positions in the organization they will be left unemployed.

The gendered division of labour exists in almost all human societies (Wilson, 2002). There are expected roles that men and women expected to take where types of labour is concerned. Women are ideally the preferred candidate for work in the maquiladoras. TNC’s explain their preference for female labour in terms of qualities that women are assumed to acquire through gender-role socialization, “ a tolerance for tedious work, a manual dexterity that suits them for minute tasks, and a docile nature that enables them to withstand the pressure of rapidly paced, closely supervised production” (Tiano, 1994, p.44). Although it seems women are receiving ‘the short end of the stick’ one should take not that both men and women face discrimination in the maquiladoras. Both genders face discrimination based on what the maquiladoras require in order to maintain maximum profits. The sexual division of labour and the division of labour in society at large determines how people act and what activities they engage in and patriarchy divides men and women and consigns each of them their respective roles within a gender hierarchy while structuring their obligations in relation to the distinctive domain of the family as well as the political economy (Prieto, 1997). The female workers in maquiladoras, like most female workers, are put in a situation where they are subject to the double work day if they have no migrated far to find work. The will work long hours at the maquiladoras then go home to take care of domestic duties. “This characteristic makes the task of analyzing female workers more complex than analyzing that of their male counterparts; the female worker apart from her exploitation as a worker is an oppressed woman” (Prieto, 1997, p. 25). Sexual harassment by male supervisors, whether of women line workers or of group chiefs, also serves capitalist enterprise by disrupting informal friendship networks among women workers (Thomas, 2010). Male supervisors are kept “tame” by their guaranteed access to women: this represents utilization of, or at least a permissive stance toward a machismo that works in the interests of the class that owns and controls the means of production. “Male supervisors’ direct power over line workers, or indirect power mediated by group chiefs, enforced through flirtation and sexual harassment, not only divides the workforce along gender lines but also dims men’s consciousness of their otherwise subaltern status vis-à-vis higher management and factory owners (Thomas, 2010). Whereas male supervisors can play the role of the sexually aggressive macho, male line workers are ignored, even considered feminized, due to their occupation of the “traditional” female role in maquiladoras, by both male supervisors and female line workers (Thomas, 2010).

In terms of gender relations women are held under a hierarchical net due to the fact that men for the most part maintain positions of power in the industry. Because they hold that power they are able to decide what kind of work is provided as well as all the other stipulations involved in the labour process. This allows them to discriminate against women who they don’t see fit for the position as well as their fellow men as there is no need for them in the positions that are available and are often times unheeded.

Discrimination is prevalent in the maquiladora industry along the northern border; female job seekers