The trade in women
CAPITALISM
In 1990, women from more than 20 Third World countries came to FIZ. However a closer look at the figures shows that 70% of them come from the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Thailand and the Philippines, and a smaller number from African countries such as Togo, Kenya and Gha-
THE international traffic in women from Africa, Asia and Latin
America does not only exist for reasons of sexism, racism and neo-colonialism. The main reason why women come to
Europe, North America or Japan, where they become nightclub dancers, prostitutes or sell themselves for marriage
— is the miserable economic state of their countries, where they can see no hope of assuring their survival and that of their children. Thus, the business cannot be divorced from the economic policies inflicted by the International Monetary
Fund on many countries in the world.
REGULA JLHY*
X
IOMARA was 22 years old, she had two young children who lived with her, her mother and her two young brothers in a house in Las Vegas in the
Dominican Republic. Xiomara provided for the whole family. She was the only one to have a regular income, working - often 12 hours a day — in a clothing factory in a free trade zone, where she earned
$50 to $60 a month. However prices continued to rise and Xiomara's salary was no longer enough. She explained that sugar workers can no longer buy their own product for themselves and that 5 libras of powdered milk (about 2kg) cost 180 pesos
- equivalent to 23 Swiss francs ($15).
The price of public transport, electricity and medicines were also rising constantly.
One day a woman told Xiomara that good money could be earned in Switzerland. Xiomara mortgaged a part of her house and paid a fee to a man involved in the women traffic. She therefore went to
Switzerland thinking that she would be working. On her arrival, she was told that, rather than being employed in a hotel, as she had been promised, she was to become a gogo girl in the sex business. To be able to send money each month to her family, Xiomara had no other possibility than to become an illegal prostitute, as well as do striptease and work as a bar hostess.
Xiomara is one of many women who come each day to the FIZ (Women's
Information Centre) in Zurich. It is estimated that there are several thousand women living legally and illegally in that city from the Dominican Republic.
The traffic in women from the Third
World cannot only be explained of course by the bad economic situation in those countries. Nonetheless it is usually the struggle for survival that tips the balance in the decision to emigrate to a rich coun try.
The majority of these women cannot now return to their countries. Once here, they have to pay off the debts incurred for their emigration, often in a form that resembles slavery. In general the gogo girls are "worn out" after five to seven years work in Switzerland; they have often suffered scrious psychological and physical harm - because of the amount of drinking they have to do they become alcoholics. They reach a point where they can no longer get hired as dancers. Meanwhile, they become too old and others "still unused" arrive. They have no future unless they can get married to a Swiss. In their country of origin, furthermore, it is even harder for a woman of 30 to get work than for a woman of 20.
Women bear brunt of adjustment programmes
As has been clearly shown by several studies, it is mostly women and children who bear the brunt of the IMF's structural adjustment programmes. Cutbacks, which first of all hit the social sector and state subsidies, lead women, for example, teachers, nurses and doctors, to lose their jobs. It is no accident that this last year, the FIZ has been receiving a growing number of women doctors and nurses from Brazil and the Dominican Republic.
In other economic sectors, women are also the first to be affected by sackings, since they tend to be employed in small and medium size firms. But the price rises that follow the suppression of subsidies on foods, medicines, schools, public transport, electricity and gas represent above all a further burden on women. In many Third World countries they take primary responsibility for children, parents and brothers and sisters.
na. These states are also at the head of the list of countries providing for sex tourism. And all of them are heavily in debt.
In the Third World countries, heav investments are made in tourism, which il is hoped will bring in hard currency. Tourism and sex tourism go along with the traffic in women. Cheap holidays among "happy-go-lucky" exotic Southerners offer Mr. Respectable a chance to escape for a while from his dismal Swiss daily life and buy everything he wants adventure, joie de vivre, souvenirs and
Quite often these same Swiss bring back a woman to participate in the same dismal
Others spend dreaming about their holidays, go to the nightclub and ask for a "brown skin" to revive their holiday memories.
Others use the catalogue of marriage bureaux and obtain an "exotic" wife, from for example, the Philippines or Brazil, for 5,000 to 7,000 francs — with the right to send her back if she is not up to expectaTourism and debt repayment
Tourism, furthermore, is not only a direct and indirect result of the Third World debt. The trade in women is also a way of gaining hard currency that permits the payment of the interest on the debt. Hard currency remitted each year by emigrants represents a significant part of hard currency income in many countries. In 1988, Philippine emigrants sent back $697m which represents 15% of the total value of that country's exports; for Sri Lanka, where most of the women go to become domestics in the Gulf states, the payments by emigrants are the second most important item in the country's income, just behind tea.
The economic importance of emigration for these countries was underlined during the Gulf war. The forced return of thousands of emigrants from the Gulf had a painful impact on the income of the coun tries concerned. But it also made it clear that emigration represents an export of unemployment and a means for lowering interal political pressure. Thus, for many women and men from the Third World, emigration has become a more credible 1. Regula Jhy works for the Fraueninformationszentrum Dritte Welt (FIZ) in Zurich. FIZ is made up of women who have come to Switzerland from all over the world. The FIZ fights against the trade in women in all its forms, and for information on the roots of this business. It gives information to and assists women from the Third World in Switzerland. Information on tionszentrum 8005 Zurich, 01/271 82 82.
International Viewpoint #212 • September 16, 1991
CAPITALISM / LATIN AMERICA option than internal political change in their countries of origin.
Alongside the feminization of world poverty we can also see a feminization of emigration. This means that a growing proportion of women no longer see any possibility of ensuring the future of their families and decide to emigrate to the advanced capitalist countries.
However to see the end of the traffic in women more is needed than a radical improvement in the economic situation in their countries of origin, also required is a change in the relations between the sexes and a change in the mentality of men who buy women as sexual objects and thereby reduce them to commodities. * confuse dogmatism with Marxism owing to their own understanding of Marxism derived from reading Soviet manuals. A strong tendency towards social democratization can also be observed, which takes as its starting point the idea that it is possible to develop a "capitalism with a human face" in our countries; this is all the more illusory in that the imperialist project does not even involve the provision of resources to "humanize" the exploitation and rob-
From Sao Paolo to
Mexico City
THE second Meeting of the continent, and notably the probbery of our peoples. Worse still, if a social democratic force did in fact form a government, it would probably limit itself to managing the existing neo-liberal programme, even if it currently expresses hostility to this.
This was why the speech at the opening of the meeting by Luiz Inacio Da Silva