"Respectable daughters"

    Before I looked at today's readings, I had a very misinformed notion of how overseas factory work functions. I was under the impression that everyone in those foreign countries that was associated with the production of American goods was being taken advantage of - That the only reason the factories were able to exist overseas was because the people there were so desperate for work that they had no other choice. In reality, the countries actually benefit significantly from the institutions of factories like this. They contribute to economic growth, and growth of the nation as a whole. Who then is at the disadvantage?
    The answer to that question is the poor women who come to work in the factories. They are paid dismal wages, experience detestable working conditions (example: getting their mouths taped over so they cannot talk to each other), and have little opportunity to unionize and increase their quality of life. Why then are they sacrificing their youth and families to come work in these factories? Because society dictates that that is the respectable thing to do. This is the main theme of the readings, and indeed one of the biggest themes of all examples of internalized oppression, in which the oppressed accept their oppression as a way of life. The government spreads messages that in order to be a patriotic, "respectable daughter", you must make sacrifices for your parents and for your family that include putting yourself through the living hell that is working in one of these factories. Women are told that their sacrifice is for the greater good, that their contribution to the process sparks economic growth. What they are told to ignore is that they are completely robbed of any of that profit, and that they are simply cogs in the money making machine that is patriarchal capitalism.
    So, all this would suggest that the blame is to lie with the foreign countries, that it is their society that promotes this awful behavior. Unfortunately, American and European companies also play a massive role in the social padlocks placed on women. You see, once women successfully begin to unionize and receive more rights and better wages, these American and European companies decide they want to move. And where do they move? To another country that is still one social step backwards, where the idea of "respectable daughters" still allows for a pool of incredibly cheap, voiceless labor.

    So we see now a great fault in attempting to fix these kinds of problems, which is the incessant need to place blame on one individual company or institution. In fact, these problems gain support from all directions. Think about the birdcage example from one of the previous readings. If the foreign governments were the only thing standing in the way of the upward mobility of women, then women in such countries as South Korea would have been largely more successful. However, the blocks from other directions, namely American and European businesses, keep them locked in their birdcage of oppression. If nothing else, we see that problems such as the disenfranchisement of women in foreign countries have many more than simply one cause, and subsequently one solution.