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Throughout the world, businesses exploit women workers by labeling some jobs as "women's jobs" and then assigning them lower wages because they are performed by women. In other words, women are paid less, not for the type of work they do, but because they are women. In industries such as textiles, clothing, and electronics, stereotypes of women having "smaller fingers" and "increased dexterity" allow corporations to justify ghettoizing women into low-paying and menial positions.

Governments in developing countries such as Panama, Indonesia, China, Bangladesh, Mexico, Jamaica, Morocco, Haiti, United Arab Emirates, the Phillipines, Sri Lanka, and Lesotho promise large pools of women workers to multinational corporations in export-processing zones. These usually young women work in dangerous conditions for extremely low wages to produce goods for the First World while their human rights are violated by governments and businesses alike. Women workers in the United States are told that Third World women have "taken" their jobs, when in fact the lack of an international working standard allows corporations to hire the cheapest labor they can find. Increasingly, that cheapest labor is child labor.

Women in Mexican maquiladoras, or border factories, work and live in miserable conditions.  These women face low wages, long hours, poor health conditions, sexual harassment, and sexual violence.  According to 1998 estimates by the Comite Fronterizo de Obreras, most maquila workers are earning the equivalent of $25 to $50 a week in an area where a pair of pants cost $15 to $20.  While most Americans assume that Mexican workers receive lower wages because their living expenses are cheaper, in fact, basic goods such as bread and milk are cheaper over the border in the U.S.

Mexican workers are subjected to dangerous and inhumane working conditions such as exposure to toxic chemicals, standing in one position for long hours, and even not being allowed to turn their heads to talk to neighboring workers.  Workers live in shacks constructed from packing crates they purchase from companies or other refuse; most have no running water, while the water they can use is unclean or stored in containers previously used for chemicals.  Despite corporate claims that the U.S.-backed trade treaty NAFTA would improve wages and conditions for Mexican workers, their wages have dropped and conditions have not improved.  With the devaluation of the peso in the 1994 Mexican economic crisis, workers purchasing power was cut in half.  For more information on women's struggles in maquiladoras, see Engendering Change: The Long, Slow Road to Organizing Women Maquiladora Workers.

Over the last three decades, the U.S. and other industrialized countries have experienced "corporate flight" as multinationals move their businesses from areas demanding livable wages, such as the U.S., Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea, to poorer countries where workers are desperate enough to work for obscenely low wages. Sweatshop Watch lists the following hourly wages for garment workers in 1995: 

Hong Kong

 $3.63

Malaysia

 $0.49

Phillipines

 $0.48

Thailand

 $0.38-0.48

Sri Lanka

 $0.13

China

 $0.12-.0.15

Vietnam

 $0.12
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In the United States, over 400,000 jobs have been lost since 1973 as U.S. corporations like Liz Claiborne and The Gap move operations overseas. Most of the workers in these factories are young women, although in some areas like Bangladesh, children from the ages of 10 and 14 also assemble the clothing we wear. Workers typically live in crowded dormitories which lack adequate facilities. These young women work six or seven days a week, ten to fifteen hours a day, but don't make enough to afford decent meals; many are malnourished. An October 1996 segment on 48 Hours revealed that workers in subcontracted Nike factories in Vietnam make only $20 a month working six days a week, earnings equalling only half the country's minimum wage.  Nike recently claimed that 25% of their workers make Rp350,000, or U.S. $47, a month.  However, the cost of three basic meals alone is $2.10 a day, or $65 a month.  While Nike may subsidize some of the workers' meals, they wouldn't have to if they paid a living wage. Dirty Laundry

Union organizing is discouraged in these factories, but as international pressure for living wages increases, corporations turn to illegal sweatshops in the United States to keep wages low. Here subcontractors exploit immigrants who often do not speak English or fear deportation, paying piece rates or below-minimum wages. Workers for Guess subcontractors, for example, do not receive health insurance, sick days, paid vacations, or holidays, and often receive no overtime pay. Because the subcontractors are operating illegally, the workers have no recourse except to expose the practices and risk losing their livelihoods. Some workers sew garments illegally at home in the evenings to earn extra money, a practice that was banned because it encourages child labor.

Although in 1992 Guess agreed to monitor its contractors, violations have not been resolved and workers have been forced to lie to inspectors about conditions. In fact, the Department of Labor removed Guess from its No Sweat list when contractors were fined for labor violations last spring. Consumers continue to pay exhorbitant prices for Guess products, while workers earn from $1.00 to $5.00 an hour.

The Government Accounting Office estimated that in 1994, 4500 of the 5000 garment shops in Los Angeles were sweatshops. The term "sweating" refers to the pressure put on workers to increase output through setting ridiculously high quotas, enforced overtime (without overtime pay), and lack of ventilation, causing the workers to sweat.  U.S. consumers are often unaware that labor exploitation happens in their country too.  Many of these workers are immigrant women who are afraid to speak up about mistreatment for fear of hassles with Immigration and Naturalization Services.  Sometimes subcontractors close up shop without paying their workers a penny for their long hours of labor.  The government needs to commit greater resources to eliminating labor violations in these shops.
 
 
  Support Unions in this country are working to eliminate sweatshops, and have agreements with some manufacturers, like Liz Claiborne, Levi Strauss, and Donna Karan, to employ union workers in their U.S. shops (although they still manufacture overseas where regulations are harder to enforce). The Gap has recently signed an agreement with UNITE to monitor its own contractors, but the results of this self-monitoring remains to be seen. Levi Strauss no longer manufactures their garments in Burma or China because of human rights abuses in those countries. These companies do not always use a union label, but consumers can check the manufacturer's label to see if it was made in the U.S. or overseas. Consumers must continue to demand that manufacturers be accountable for the production conditions of their goods.

Why Shop? Week provides women workers in this country an opportunity to focus on their shared needs with women workers overseas for fair wages, safe working conditions, childcare, equal pay with men, and relief from the double duty of paid labor and unpaid housework. Workers should not compete for jobs, but demand that companies implement ethical business practices worldwide.