Emancipation or Exploitation? A study of women workers in Mexico's maquiladora industry

Abstract

Emancipation or Exploitation? A study of women in Mexico's maquiladora industry. Processes of economic globalization have caused the proliferation of export-processing zones in developing countries, as multinational corporations outsource production to low-wage areas in the Third World. This has reshaped the world patterns of production, and transformed South-North trade relations. Another effect is that Third World women in different comers of the globe have been drawn into the industrial workforce, thereby entering the public sphere of paid production from which they have traditionally been excluded. This case study of women in the Mexican maquiladora industry seeks to find out whether this work should be considered as conducive to the emancipation of these women, or whether it merely signifies an exploitation of the same. When comparing the findings with the two ideal types 'the integration thesis' and 'the exploitation thesis', it is found that the work in the maquiladora industry could most aptly be described as exploitative. However, when aspects of the feminist notion of empowerment are taken into account, the results are modified somewhat: the emancipating effects can be obtained, although in another way than predicted by the liberal 'integration thesis'.