Feminist news & analyses
Why We're Not Getting Married
We love each other, and we've been in a committed relationship for nearly twenty years. We are residents of Massachusetts. But we're not getting married. We fully believe that gays and lesbians should have the right to marry, and we celebrate the fact that a significant barrier to our full citizenship has fallen. by Martha Ackelsberg and Judith Plaskow, Common Dreams
Global Summit of Women Begins in South Korea
Women leaders from around the world convened in Seoul, South Korea last week for a three-day summit on increasing the economic power of women worldwide. Feminist Majority Foundation
Inside catwalks
Reports show the new fashion in textile industry. Inhuman workdays and without any rights, especially for women and immigrants, renew shop windows and guarantee promotions demanded by market (Rita Freire, Planeta Porto Alegre)
By Rita Freire
A nebula of promises has surrounded for years, fashion and textile production universe. The glamorous fashion shows and the strange chance of social promotion represented by model career are just the most sparkling part of this fantasy. Newspapers and magazine pages are filled with advertisements of famous brands. Searching for the ordinary consumer, these ones launch new collections in a frenetic rhythm. Brands targeting on masses, imitate very fast the cloths and innovative patterns launched on catwalks. Someday, everybody will have the right to dress according to the most recent fashion tendency.
Consumption and production are overflowed with “democracy”. In a couple of month ( in 2005), the Agreement for textiles and clothes, will finish. It guaranteed rich countries the right to protect its national production from cheap imports. Backed by World Trade Organization (WTO), the Sooth was planning to sell its textiles without borders. All that shows that even if it is unfair, neoliberal globalization opens new opportunity windows for those who follow its dynamism, right?
It is wrong. It is the answer given by two reports recently published by the NGO Oxfam, specialized in the struggle against poverty. Both texts take an x-ray of the damages caused in the labor world when “free” goods circulation laws and rights “flexibilization” come into force.
One of these reports (“Fashion tightens”) dissects the case of the powerful Spanish fashion industry. It proves how it promotes the fierce competence among workers and forces them to accept precarious rights and salaries. The first victims are employees from poor countries (in this case, Morocco) but in a short term the boomerang comes back against Spain – specially affecting women and immigrants.
The document describes 16 hours workdays, workers living in factories without rights to holidays, and dismissals for illness. It mainly fights the idea that reducing production costs is, always, a goal to be reached. It proves that according to the ruling regulations of globalization, this process is useful to put workers under a fatal question: Who does accept to working more for less money? It is also the title of the second report. Oxfam suggests an alternative: a reorganization of international trade, in which rights that guarantee social rights and environmental protection replace “free” trade.
Who pays the bill of the “incredible sales”?
New fashion slaves, as these reports show, are far away from catwalks. These anonymous women were responsible for keeping the “Olympic” rhythm of production of textile and clothes industry. These are people like Nong, 26-year-old Thai dressmaker, who is afraid of having children. Her workday doesn’t leave any time to think about her personal life. It is full of overtime hours that go until midnight, sewing underwear to fulfill the heavy deadlines of the brand Victoria´s Secret.
Zakia is a 36-year-old Moroccan that sews clothes for Spanish firms such as El Corte Ingles. She is afraid to be ill and to need to stay at home. It has already happen and she knows the consequences. “I brought my boss the medical certificate, and I received a written warning” she reminds.
Far away from consumers’ eyes, women as Nong and Zakia and other thousand heard by Oxfam have an strategic role in the new rules of market adopted by this sector: who produces more and cheaper has its place in shop windows. These women give corporations what they need to have competitive prices, incredible “sales” and faster changes of collections.
Famous brands, precarious jobs
The report “Fashion tightens” is straight focused in the sector leaded by the Spanish Inditex Mango, Cortefiel and Induyco that employs in precarious conditions, a high amount of immigrant women. Moroccans residents in Spain, represent 70% of its labor force. But dressmakers from Morocco are also included, without leaving the country, in the chain of globalized production that supplies these corporations.
For example, El Corte Ingles, buy clothes to Induyco group, that uses Moroccan suppliers. To feed sales, this group already gave fabricants just 5 days to renew supplies. The glamorous and internationally known brand Zara renews its shop windows each 20 days. To do so, it is a champion in deadlines, given to its supplier (Inditex) that forwards these orders to its own suppliers and dressmakers. In a general way, retailers, reduced in a 30% the deadlines, in the past years.
The firms that were investigated in Spain have ethic codes in which is written that its suppliers should treat its under-hired with dignity. But when they act, they forget it. Oxfam General Director, points that these corporations establish “so hard commercial conditions” that it is impossible to respect codes. If they are literally quoted, Inditex, Mango and Cortefiel promise to rethink about these problems. But the tendency to open contracts is being generalized.
WTO and World Bank are behind this overexploitation
Despite Oxfam advices to change behavior – of companies, governments, workers, consumers, and even IMF – the organization points the current model of globalization as the cause of inhuman labor conditions. Inspired by this model, there were created in the last twenty years, all “freedoms” requested by big corporations to impose cost reduction. WTO and regional and multilateral areas of trade are among the main actors
