Multinational Corporations and Labor Rights

            The most interesting idea from this week’s reading from Enloe’s The Curious Feminist was the idea that everyone, from American employers and subcontractors in Asia to governments spread throughout Asia, has done their best to reinforce the stereotype that women should work to contribute to their family’s wellbeing in addition to their dowries.  The benefits from promoting this idea did a lot to help the bottom line of the companies’ profits, which keeps them investing in Asian countries.  Without the foreign investment, many smaller countries in South Asia would have had failing economies.  By enforcing the idea that young women have a lot to gain by working in industrial factories, local and national governments were able to keep multinational corporations interested in opening new factories in Asia.

            However, it is important to look at how the influence of the multinational companies affected the women in Asia.  The implementation of the idea that women should work in grueling, unsafe conditions to help their social position is less than ideal.  On some levels, the idea that women should work to help out their nation is something that many countries have used (successfully, depending on your viewpoint) to help spur women to join the workforce.  However, using media to enforce the idea of working to help your country during a war, as the US did, is different than exploiting the female population to boost your economy, at the expense of conditions and safety of a large portion of the workforce.  It is unacceptable for wages to be around 50% of the male population, in countries where wages are already extremely low.  As social changes start to have a larger role in developing countries without much attention on human rights and labor rights, there will be an increased focus on changing expectations and rules associated with women in the workforce.