Gender and Globalization
ms_lomy
WGST205_11april2018.pptxWeek 12: Globalization and Gender-Based Violence
WGST 205:
Gender and Globalization
Thursday, 12 April 2018
Rape culture refers to the hegemonic beliefs and attitudes in a given institutional context that tolerate, condone, and normalize gender-based violence.
Rape culture makes rape and sexual assault both INEVITABLE and INVISIBLE.
Rape culture is shaped by institutional practices and policies.
What institutional practices in the maquiladoras set the stage for the sexual assaults and even murders of women workers?
Rape Culture in the Maquiladoras
What explains the sexual assaults and murders of young women in Juarez?
Patriarchy – male dominance over women in the family and workplace.
Maquila Rape Culture and Victim-Blaming – blaming women for their own sexual assaults and murders; excusing men’s violence in a patriarchal system.
Neoliberalism – violence against women tied to maquila industry; turning a blind eye to the violence committed against women to preserve the interests of neoliberal capitalism.
Feminicide in Ciudad Juarez
The Mexican government generally turns a blind eye to violations of labor law, including workplace sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, and violence against women.
Possible exam question:
Provide three specific examples of gender-based labor law violations in the maquiladoras. Why does the Mexican government turn a blind eye to the labor abuses of women maquiladora workers? Your response must include a discussion of the term “zone of graduated sovereignty.”
Why the Blind Eye?
Under global capitalism, sovereign authorities (i.e., the US and Mexico) devise particular zones where regulations and rights are designed to secure “development” and prosperity for those outside.
Sovereign borders bend to “graduated notions of sovereignty,” producing zones of exception wherein governments incorporate the interests of important players in the global capitalist order.
While states retain formal sovereignty, corporations and multilateral agencies exert de facto control over the conditions of living, laboring, and migratory populations in special zones.
“Zone of Graduated Sovereignty” (Ong 1999)
California Proposition 187 (1994) – “Save Our State” Initiative; law prohibiting undocumented immigrants from using state-funded reproductive health and educational services.
The initiative’s preamble reads: “The People of California… have suffered and are suffering economic hardship caused by the presence of illegal aliens in this state.”
The War on Undocumented Immigrant Women
The US State defines “national security” to include “domestic political concerns and perceived threats to culture, social stability, environmental degradation, and population growth” (Falcon, 121).
Under “Operation Gatekeeper” (1994), $1.2 billion went to strengthen the US Border Patrol.
Why are undocumented immigrant women perceived to be “national security” threats?
US Border Patrol as a Military
Falcon calls the rapes of women along the US-Mexico Border “national security rape” – a form of militarized sexual violence that bolsters and calms a “nervous” state.
What Border Patrol practices make it akin to a military? How do they shape a rape culture?
What makes it possible for US Border Patrol officers to sexually assault women seeking to cross the border?
Falcon locates these rapes at the intersection of patriarchy, neoliberalism, and militarization.
Violence Against Undocumented Immigrant Women and the US Border Patrol
