Anuradha Shyam: "Safe Keepers and Wage Earners"
Shyam begins her piece by describing her life as a rising financial business woman maintaining her workload and her friends and family. She briefly recounts her business training and education. Initially, the reader gets a sense that this is an active young woman who has strove for success in the business world. Shyam adds another dimension to this image when she goes into greater detail regarding her life leading up to her current position. Her father was the head of the household while her mother exerted some influence, but it was limited and pertained to her position as homemaker. All important executive decisions regarding "finances, health, and education" were considered the realm of her father's dominion. When she moved to the United States, her mother needed to help support the family, so she got a job outside of the home for the first time. Shyam notes the changes that this implemented on her young life. In addition to no longer having a stay at home mother, now a new level of responsibility was thrust upon her.
This background, and a strong interest in women issues, led Shyam to pursue education and research in the area of south Asian immigrants working in the United States. She noted that these immigrant women were still looked upon through the traditional roles attributed to them by their cultures, while at the same time needing to perform the new roles/jobs they needed when they arrived in the US. In practice, these women, even though they were more active and working in the public sphere, were still bound to, and defined by, the men in their lives. This fact has unfortunately contributed to continued domestic violence towards these women. Shyam, and other organizations, focused on working with these women to offer them betterment in their lives. by teaching them in financial management, resume writing, and interview skills, these battered, South Asian women were given opportunities for personal empowerment and advancement that they had never experienced before.
Shyam goes on to discuss the duality of South Asian women living in the US. While they live their roles as American women they also feel an immense pressure to uphold their culture and traditions. This gives them an added level of stress and responsibility, for they must succeed in both the business and domestic roles that their dual-natured lives demand!
Cynthia Enloe: Leading the Way
In the chapter "The Globetrotting Sneaker" Enloe implores her readers to think a little bit harder about something which most take for granted; sneakers. People seem to quickly forget that the stitching on one's Nikes or the laces on one's Reeboks were made by women, specifically, Asian women. By having large business corporations with production factories overseas, women seem to be targeted, and exploited, the most. Their labor is very poorly compensated and they are forced to work in dirty and/or dangerous conditions. It speaks volumes about both industry and consumers in America. For business tycoons to be willing to profit off of unfair labor conditions and the exploitation of women's labor is a very unsettling and upsetting notion. And what is, in my opinion, even worse is that the consumer either ignores these harrowing facts or is unperturbed by them. I think it is revolting that people are willing to exploit these women just so they can by their "kicks" without paying an [even more] exorbitant price!
Luckily, these female workers, i.e. in South Korea, are beginning to join together to make demands on their factories for safe working conditions and better wages. Unfortunately, these organizations are met with contempt and a lack of progress. Low wages (although when compared to other Asian factory wages they arent terrible), poor conditions and dangerous/unhealthy environment doesnt seem to be ending any time soon. Hopefully, as more consumers become aware of their complicit roles in this exploitation they will start to put and end to it.
In her other chapter, "Daughters and Generals in the Politics of the Globalized Sneaker," Enloe delves deeper into the global aspect of the sneaker industry. I had never really thought of how large a role sneakers play in American life, but as Enloe illustrates, it seems athletic shoes are currently, and have been for a while, a VERY important facet of American Life. From college to professional athletes, particular brands or styles have been idealized and marketed. It is very interesting to learn just how many of these shoes are coming from Asian factories (nearly all of them!).
The role of "cheap labor" is huge. For Americans, they are looking for the easiest ways to keep prices down to promote a larger clientele. For Asian women, they are forced to accept their low wages because they have no way to effectively demand for better. They also are forced to think of their duty in the factories as a patriotic one, a way to provide not only for the family, but for the betterment of the nation as a whole. I was interested in her analysis of asian women working for their dowries, and comparing this to the democratization in South Korea by installing worker turnover. It is interesting to think that the money these women are making isnt even going into their own pockets. It is either being sent home, or used to pay for a [male] relatives education, or it is being saved for a dowry.
I think it is only when the entire western world can clearly asses the situation of asian women in American production factories can this cycle ever end. To me, as long as there is a steady demand for low priced products, we will be dependent on a stream of cheap labor. While we cannot, due to labor laws in the US, access this labor at home, we will continue to look abroad, specifically to asian countries, where labor is cheap and plentiful. I think it will take a lot of education and human right appeals for consumers to finally acknowledge that their sneakers come at a much higher price than that which is noted on the tag.
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