'Women in the global factory' a capitalist basis — usually in the form of large plantations or small freeholdings. Many women in the countryside are forced to become agricultural wagelaborers and often are able to find only migratory and seasonal work. Although
"In Malaysia, mythological spirit, while peering through a microscope. She falls to the floor in convulsions, screaming with 'masuk hantu, spirit possession Within minutes the hysteria spreads up and down the assembly line Sometimes factories must be closed for a week or more while the evi spirits are exorcised...In Malaysia, women have virtually no other outlets to protest working conditions." (Women in the Global Factory, by Ehrenreich, South End Press, Boston)
In their pamphlet, Fuentes and Ehrenreich present a succinct and useful portrait of recent industrialization in the Third World, its control by multinational corporations and financial institutions, and its impact on the women workers in material primarily from Asia (Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Centrad America. (especially Mexico), they do a fine job of interweaving a sense of the experiences of individual women with an overall description and analysis of the problem.
Women in the Global Factory focuses on women factory workers - especially in the textile, electronies and microprocessor industries — who are employed in free trade zones. Free trade zones, or export processing zones as they are also called, are areas set aside in underdeveloped countries where foreign corporations (the majority are US-controlled) can set up shop without paying taxes or custom-import duties, and where they are provided with a controlled workforce.
As Fuentes and Ehrenreich say, "Free trade zones - there are now over 100 -mean more freedom for business and less freedom for people. Inside, behind walls often topped with barbed wire, the zones resemble a huge labor camp where trade unions, strikes and freedom of movement are severely limited, if not forbidden. special police force is on hand to search people and vehicles entering or leaving
The majority of workers in these free trade zones are young women, who work usually paid 3 dollars to 5 dollars a day, an income that cannot provide the basic necessities for a single person, let alone for a woman trying to support her children. They are also subjected to particular forms of harassment and exploitation ranging from pregnancy tests (and being fired immediately if they are found to be pregnant), to lay-offs at age 25 (since they are past their "most productive" years), to sexist advertising attempting to attract foreign investors.
A Malaysian government investment brochure advertises: International Viewpoint 9 April 1984 where labor unions are outlawed
Annette Fuentes and Barbara terity of the Oriental female is famous the world over. Her hands are small, and she works fast with extreme care...Who, could be better qualified by nature and inheritance, to contribute to the efficiency of a bench-assembly production line than the Oriental girl?"
One aspect of this new industrial work which Fuentes and Ehrenreich focus on is the health and safety hazards it in-
They point out that the conditions in the garment and textile industries
"visibly unhealthy, rivaling those of any 19th century sweatshop."
dangerous are the electronic and micro-processor industries. Here women are daily exposed to toxic work and high levels of stress. There are no health benefits; vacation or sick days; unemployment or disability insurance; social security; or adequate services such as daycare centers, health clinics and decent housing to meet their new needs. capitalist corporations are really creating global factories (the title of the pamphlet is not just a metaphor) where work is broken down and farmed out on an international basis. The least skilled and most noxious and tedious work goes to Third World countries - especially to
The whole system is of course designed to facilitate increased profit-making.
But Fuentes and Ehrenreich do not fully draw out the implications of this trend. They fail to note that workers in the neo-colonial world are in a less favorable position to unionize and to demand basic rights because they control only a small and easily movable part of the total production process. Changing lives
One of the most serious limitations of Women in the Global Factory is that, in on factory workers, it only touches the surface of the deep transformations occurring in women's lives Africa. Most women in these regions are not yet assembly-line workers, but their lives are just as surely being changed as a still involved in food production, rural women - both peasant and proletarian -often go hungry and they and their children experience life-threatening malnutrition.
Other women find themselves pushed out of the agricultural economy and into the cities, with little chance of even finding factory work. The overwhelming majority seek work as domestic servants, where their low pay is combined with a lack of freedom and often with less than humane treatment. Others who are more fortunate, may find work in the low-paid but ever-expanding service, clerical and within the "pink collar
Many women, however, can find no regular niche in the "new" economy. If still embedded in a traditional family these women may become "housewives," economically dependent on and increasingly subordinate to husbands and other male family members. But most of these women are on their own and try to create their means of survival in the margins of the economy as day-workers, street vendors or prosti-
Capitalist development does not just women economically. forms all aspects of their lives. It causes others have of them - of their roles, their abilities, their persons, their sexuality to generally become narrowed, negative and denigrating. with the explosion of personal violence against women, as well as the military terror needed to keep capitalism intact in places like El Salvador and Guatemala.
What are the solutions to these problems facing Third World women? answers do Fuentes and Ehrenreich
The picture presented in Women in the Global Factory clearly shows the need for a revolutionary solution. Yet the authors' suggestions for what can be done are limited to reforms in the sys
But it is capitalist development, itself - the whole system of production based on private property and profit-making for a few - that is at the core of the increase in oppression and suffering and Ehrenreich emphasize that the solution must be global, which seems absolutely correct, and talk about creating links between women around the world such as an international network to share information on hazardous substances and corporate policies. But most of their proposals are limited to sugges-
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WOMEN
AROUND THE WORLD
Turkish protesters face trial
"The objective of this action is to denounce the murder of eight patriots, including the mayor of the city of Gerbukan in Kurdistan, as well as the attack by the police and the special repressive forces against another sixty Kurdish patriots, when they savagely suppressed the protest in Diyarbakir prison."
slogans in support of the Turkish refugees. And revolutionary left activists, mainly students, distributed statements signed by Turkish revolutionary organizations.
The area was surrounded by the police who guarded the Ministry of Communications, and in a short time a squad of special the Turkish militants from leaving after the press conference."
The Turkish militants risked their lives by crossing the border to continue the struggle. After that, they faced the ghetto of the Lavrios camp, destitution, isolation. To get out of the camp, you need the consent of the authorities who check your reasons for wanting to leave. To find a job, in most cases as a dish washer and for a short time, is a small miracle.
Today, if they are not banned from political activity outright, it is made very difficult. While Averoff, Metsotakes and others [the rightist politicians] exalt the virtues of Kenan Evren [the Turkish
With those words, on February 9, Turkish activists were talking to report14 Turkish and Kurdish political prisoners, all members of revolutionary organizations, explained to reporters the aim of their two-hour occupation of the offices of the Turkish airline, T.H.Y., in Syntagma Square in Athens. In order to carry out this occupation, they had to disarm a plainclothes policeman guarding the premises. On April 5, a court will try these protesters on baseless charges of ers about the slaughter of prisoners in Diyarbakir prison, about how the prison was sealed off by tanks and how the smoke rising over the prison showed that the protest would end with a massacre. The special forces prepared to go into action "against the terrorists." They were ordered to "attack and to prevent dictator], the government seems to think that it has done its socialist duty by the Turkish political refugees simply by assuring their survival. This article is from the March issue of Ergatike Pale, the paper of the Greek section of the Fourth International.
"resistance to authority" and "illegal violence." Belgian Fourth Internationalists form
The 14 militants were unarmed when
Socialist Workers Party they occupied the airline offices, which they had entered previously in small groups. After they let all the employees leave, they hung out a banner in Greek and Turkish inviting reporters for a press conference.
At the same time, outside the occupied office a crowd gathered shouting
Women in the global factory tions of ways to counter particular abuses of multinational corporations, along the lines of the Nestle boycott.
Fuentes and Ehrenreich present a clear description of the function of governments in both underdeveloped advanced capitalist states - especially in the United States - in underwriting this exploitative process This support ranges from economic incentives to military repression.
The struggles of Third World women for economic and political freedom must therefore involve workplace actions and strikes - many examples of which are documented in this pamphlet. But they must also attain a level of political organization that opposes capitalism and goes in a revolutionary socialist direction. This is also the only real solution for working people in the United States. Our struggles are intertwined.
This review was first published in the March 1984 edition of Socialist Action, an American socialist monthly published in San Francisco. 26
The Revolutionary Workers League (LRTRAL), Belgian section of the Fourth International, held its seventh national con-
A very large majority of the 60 delegates present approved the political resolution entitled "Towards a vanguard workers party', adopted a motion that decided to change the name of the party to Socialist Workers Party (POS-SAP), and new party statutes. Far from being a routine event, this seventh congress marked an important turning point in the history of the Belgian section of the Fourth International. It followed a long internal discussion on a self-critical balance sheet on its 15-year history.
The IRT-RAL was formally founded in 1971 by the fusion of three organisations: the Belgian section of the time, the Jeune Garde Socialiste, the youth organisation of the Socialist Party, which had been sympathetic to the Fourth International since 1969, and a small left centrist party, the product of a split in the SP in 1965, whose Walloon (Frenchspeaking) wing in particular had a workers base in several big industrial plants.
Nevertheless, this new organisation had to build itself in difficult conditions. There was a very markedly uneven development between, on the one hand, the decline in workers struggles, and rising student radicalisation on the other.
However, at the same time the Walloon working class was suffering the effects of unemployment from 1966-67 while the Flemish proletariat was strengthened and made more combative by the effects of assisted economic expansion in the north of the country, although this combativity was not reflected in a level of consciousness or union organisation comparable to that which still existed in the Walloon country.
Thus, these three initial components, of which the JGS was undoubtedly the most dynamic, drew on the active forces of the anti-imperialist movement, the student movement and the successive waves of spontaneous workers strikes.
Despite the presence of seasoned worker militants and influential union delegates [shop stewards] the line and the functioning of the LRT-RAL was determined during this period by the role played by activists who had come in large part from the student movement. This led, among other things, to a certain de lay in accumulating experienced comrades and some difficulties in recruiting and keeping workers with experience of leading struggles. The decline in revolutionary prospects in Europe, particularly after 1974-75 in Portugal, and the violent austerity offensive of the bourgeoisie, led in the end to a sharp political crisis within the organisation at the end of 1978.
International Viewpoint 9 April 1984
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