Who Profits?
Paying women less does not mean that women consumers are guaranteed lower prices, but instead guarantees higher profits for male-controlled businesses. For example, according to the National Labor Committee, the Walt Disney Company pays Haitian women as little as six cents for every $19.99 Disney garment, which means that labor costs are only .3% of the product. In El Salvador, teenaged girls were paid only 12 cents for every $20 Gap shirt, or .6% of labor costs.
Because labor costs are so low, corporations make huge profits which translate to obscene salaries, bonuses, and stock dividends for CEOs and owners. Philip Knight, Nike President, has a net worth of 5.8 billion dollars, according to the 1997 Forbes 400 List, but Indonesian Nike workers make only twenty cents an hour. The three Marciano brothers who own Guess made a combined total of $247,877,840 from 1993-95, almost a quarter of a billion dollars in three years. At 40 hours a week, this wage would equal $13,301 an hour for each brother, more than the $5.00 an hour a Guess sweatshop worker could earn in a year!
Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer, with total sales in 1997 of $118 billion. That means that Wal-Mart's annual sales are larger than 155 of the world's 192 countries! According to the Campaign for Labor Rights, Wal-Mart earned $2.6 billion dollars in annual profits, yet pays workers only 9 cents/hr in Bangladesh, 43 cents/hr in Hondurus, and 12 1/2 cents/hr in China, wages far below a living wage. Outside monitors of Wal-Mart factories have found children as young as 9 in Bangladesh, workers in China forced to work 84 hours a week, and Nicaraguan workers locked into a factory compound for twelve and a half hours, with only one half hour break for lunch. In 1997 Forbes magazine listed the Walton family (owners of Wal-Mart) as the third richest family in the world, worth $27.6 billion dollars.
The National Labor Committee's People's Right to Know Campaign insists that companies like Nike, Guess, and Wal-Mart disclose the location of their factories, subcontracted or owned, so that human rights groups can monitor them. Factory locations are not "trade secrets": many companies share contractors. What these companies are really trying to hide are the disgraceful and inhumane treatment of their workers.
Women workers worldwide earn lower wages than men simply because they are women. In the U.S., women earn only 75 cents for every dollar men make. Even more disturbing is the fact that, according to the Department of Labor, while 3.4 million men in this country earn $75,000 a year or more, only 437,000 women do. Women are often segregated into low-paying jobs through biases in education and training programs or denied access to higher-paying jobs through job discrimination and sexual harassment. Because women are under- or unrepresented in government, corporate, or intergovernmental policy-making groups, discriminatory practices such as these often remain unchallenged. Why Shop? Week asks women to consider how economic and social profits can be attained through alternative non-exploitative policies and practices. Working together through organizations like Sweatshop Watch, Womensnet, and The Feminist Majority, women can make change!