About Why Shop? Week
Retailers and manufactures alike pocket enormous profits while consumers and workers pay the price. The average wage for Indonesian workers in the U.S. footware companies such as Adidas, Nike and Reebok is only twenty cents per hour. Haitian workers sewing clothes for Disney earn as little as $1.00 per day. Garment workers in U.S. sweat shops reportedly work sixteen hour a day, seven days a week, without any employee benefits. Young women in electronic industries are considered dispensable by their employers, and many lose their sight after two years of peering through microscopes.
"I was shocked to learn that some of my favorite companies like Guess and Nike are making money off human suffering"
--Liliana Torrico, CU Women's Studies student
"Consumers have a right to know the facts and a responsibility to become better informed about working conditions and the economic status of women globally... Know the story behind the product."
--Anita Roddick, founder and CEO of The Body Shop, during a recent CU visit ""
During Why Shop? Week, the organizers ask that consumers use their economic strength to empower women worldwide. "I don't want to buy products that exploit others," states Emily Johnson, a spokesperson for Why Shop? Week. She and the other organizers recommend that during this year's frenzied holiday shopping period, consumers give a gift to women worldwide by asking, "Who needs it? Who makes it? Who profits from it?" before they purchase another wasteful, unnecessary, or exploitative product that profits some at the expense of others.