Wal-Mart & Their "Disposable Women"

With the spreading of global business, comes the spreading of global ideologies, and when global businesses take over smaller entities, their ideologies do the same. With American businesses spreading across the globe, dominating every aspect of the capitalist world, comes the onslaught of American ideology all over the globe. This is one of the reasons why I like to refer to globalization as "capitalist colonization." I use this term to refer to the way that the American business take over is not just making American business head of the business world, but also the social world.

The main way that these large, global businesses, Wal-Mart being the largest, make their money is because of cheap labor. The capitalist way is to find a way to make an inexpensive, quality product that people will buy without having to spend money on workers, because paying employees is the number one expense of every business. So, if big businesses can travel abroad and find the cheapest labor, that will cut a huge portion of their budget. Not only do they travel to these countries that are portrayed as "Third World," but they get workers who are portrayed as more disposable, women. The American portrayal of the Third World women as almost disposable legitimizes global businesses in using these women as cheap labor. They have no problem taking large numbers of women and making them work long hours in horrible conditions...as long as their business is making them money. Women are seen as more obedient, more detail-focused, more dexterous, and more nimble, so global retailers such as a Wal-Mart use women from these disadvantaged countries to make cheap clothing to sell in their stores. The stereotype of the Asian American as submissive contributes to American businesses going to East Asia to look for female workers who fit the racial stereotype.

After a while of this ongoing cycle of oppression, it becomes naturalized in these women's minds, and becomes what is real. Not only do they become cut off from the majority of society, they get cut off from their own families for long periods of time. Just like how a lot of Mexican miles migrate to the US for the sole purpose of supporting their family, these female sweatshop workers migrate, with promises of opportunity, to support their families but instead get caught in a situation that is the opposite of what they were expecting. Although there are no official statistics on sweatshop workers, the overwhelming majority is women.

Not only do these women face horrible working conditions, but when they do get sick or injured, their jobs are quicky under question. If they get seriously injured, they are fired without a question, because they can be easily replaced. If they are sick, they are sent home, usually without care, so others do not get sick. Even the women who work in the actual Wal-Mart stores across the globe are treated disposably, although not as harsh. Female workers at Wal-Marts have disposable jobs as well; not only do they get moved around from store to store at their expense. In Selling Women Short, women like Betty Dukes, who first began the unrest amongst female workers at Wal-Mart, talk about how they were constantly transferred from store to store. Women like Dukes had to travel far distances to make little pay and have little opportunity for advancement. Some people say it isn't worth it, but the women who work at the Wal-Marts in our country, as well as the sweatshop workers abroad, travel distances for the sole purpose of making the money to support their family. Why so much importance on money?

The same way gender ideologies have been spreading across the globe because of globalization, the capitalist ideology is doing the same. Everything we do in a capitalist society centers around money, and as global business tyrants like Wal-Mart spread this idea throughout the globe, people such as these sweatshop workers are forced to abandon their cultural and societal ways in order to survive in the spreading capitalist world.

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