The North American Free Trade Agreement has had long-standing negative effects on gender roles and the economy in Mexico, presenters said Friday at the second day of the ‘iexcl;Mexico Hoy! conference.
NAFTA, which was passed in 1994 under the Clinton administration, was approved under the assumption that it would bring Mexico new and better jobs, higher wages and economic growth to the U.S. and Canada, said Marta Ojeda, director of the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladora.
"Everybody thinks that we, the Mexicans, really have benefits of the free trade because we gained over a million jobs from the maquiladoras, or the sweatshops, but nobody thinks how many jobs Mexico lost with the privatizations with the good jobs," Ojeda said.
Ojeda, a maquiladora worker for 20 years at Sony, said the agricultural industry was also deeply affected, with 1.37 million jobs lost in the Mexican agricultural sector from 1993 to 2002 – a workforce including 1 million men and 375,000 women.
Rosemary Hennessy, director of the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Rice University, said NAFTA has also had a harmful effect on gender roles in Mexico.
Originally, men were supposed to be working in the maquiladoras. Though gender was a significant factor in determining the maquiladora workforce, other factors, such as age and turnover rates, affected the job security of workers, Hennessey said. Female workers between the ages of 25 and 30 are physically worn out and not expected to stay for very long, she said.
"They’re not expected to stay very long, they’re not expected to be loyal, they’re not expected to move up the ranks. … Their bodies are getting used up," she said. "Their hands have developed carpal tunnel or their backs are too weak to support standing all day."
By 1997, the workforce in the maquiladoras was composed of half men and half women, but as the years went on, women became the majority of the workforce. After NAFTA was passed, the automotive industry moved to Mexico and men began being recruited to maquiladoras, Hennessey said.
"One of the major reasons why corporations moved the factories to Mexico is that the profit margin is wider. And the profit margin widens not just because workers are paid lower wages, which of course they are, but also because the health and safety provisions that are required in the United States are not part of the deal," she said.
The maquiladoras workers who assemble safety parts for cars, such as seat belts and airbags under Key Safety Systems, are not given any protection or safety equipment from the dangerous substances they are handling, Hennessey said.
Since NAFTA went into effect, the number of Mexicans living in poverty has grown, Ojeda said. In 2007, the minimum wage was $5 a day for an eight-hour workday. Some maquiladoras pay as much as $6 to $8 a day, she said.
"To buy a gallon of milk in 2000, a maquila worker in Nuevo Laredo must work 197 minutes. To buy a kilo of rice, a maquila worker in Juarez must work one hour while an undocumented worker in L.A. works only 12 minutes," she said.
Along with maquiladoras workers, Mexican farmers have also been greatly affected by NAFTA, Hennessey said.
"Under NAFTA, the deregulation of land has intensified and triggered migration from within Mexico. Over 2 million people have been forced off their land in Mexico since NAFTA. Eighty percent of Mexican farmers have fewer than 12 acres of land," Hennessey said.
In January 2008, the NAFTA agricultural provisions were completed. As a result, tariffs on corn, dry edible beans, sugars, non-fat dry milk and high fructose corn syrup were removed, Hennessey said.
"While policy makers and the media and the U.S. are focused so much on immigration reform, really one of the connections that they consistently fail to make or the questions they fail to ask are why it’s happening," Hennessey said. "I hope that out of this talk and out of this conference the answer to that question is one you will carry away. That is the systemic cause for the forced displacement of people."
