Intersectionality Works Again

After reading about the Maquiladora's in Mexico, it is clear that there is a real problem present. Most appalling statistic for me was the although the businesses possibly contribute billions of dollars the local economy, a worker makes on average 1 dollar an hour. “The maquiladora worker is among the least expensive in the world,” (466 IWS). However devastating the information presented is, there are even worse things happening behind that statistic, which brings up the term intersectionality. We first were introduced to intersectionality by Crenshaw, who defines it as the idea that many aspects make up a person’s entire identity. Essentially, every person belongs to multiple groups simultaneously, and these groups have the ability to overlap. After reading these articles and Ciudad Jaurez, we can see how the concept overlaps. These reading specifically focused on the “Systemati[matic] violat[tion of] women's fundamental rights,” (468 IWS). Although the focus in these reading tends to be on the fact that the majority of workers are women, its it also found that these women have many other identities. These identities include: mother, daughter, wife, friend and many more. These multiple identities make them important contributors to society in other ways, and important to many other people. For example, many of the women who work in the factories are also mothers, and the long work time seriously compromises their ability to be a good mother for their children. “Mothers who work on the assembly lines often have no choice by to leave their children at home to look after themselves, and they often turn to drugs or gang violence as the grow older(464 IWS). Not only does their work hours and low pay effect the people depending on them, as does the horrible conditions that can be toxic, hot and dangerous. There is a real problem with defining women in one way, and this is also seen in prejudice against pregnant women. “...she had to take a pregnancy test...[and] were tested when they were hired,” (467 IWS). The women who were tested positive were turned down for being hired. Furthermore, for the women who were already hired and get pregnant, the companies are very unaccommodating. These women should not have been discriminated against just because they undertook a new identity. It is imperative that women, whether they are pregnant, a mother or anything else, are treated accordingly and specifically. Lastly, in Ciudad, Juares the girl Claudia is a girl just coming into a woman who was working at a Maquiladora then murdered. When reading the entire story, we see that she is a girl of many layers. “Put on a white blouse with a lace overlay, even if the uniform will cover it, its nice to know you've got something nice underneath, even if no one will see it.” I think this is a summation of how while she was a women working in factory in Mexico, she was also a lot of other things. The book pointed out that it is important to approach her murder with importance and care for this reason.