A Brief Shopping List: As a Product of our Globalized Patriarchy
By Emma Long
As I read Under Western Eyes by Chandra Mohanty and Surviving Globalization by Evelyn Hu-Dehart I began to reflect deeper upon a global heteropatriarchal capitalistic system set up to convenience a few at the expense of many. I started to think about my own blindness (or my desire to be blind) to the people, more specifically the women, of the Global South who labor to produce goods for the Global North- a system in which I fully take part in. How can we remove ourselves from this cyclical system of classist and misogynistic oppression?
As I sat down to write this entry, hating on these seemingly evil, omniscient systems, I found myself contemplating the very object I was writing on: my laptop. I thought of my clothing and my breakfast. So I wrote a shopping list of a few objects I had encountered throughout my morning that have direct ties to the feminization of hard labor and factory work.
A Brief Shopping List:
As a product of our globalized patriarchy:
The sweater I’m wearing
It’s cute and pink and wonderfully cozy for these long winter months. My mother bought it for me when we were shopping at an H&M during my high-school years.
It was made in China. Probably by the hands of a young woman in a factory, most likely in terrible conditions, with long hours, working for very little pay. This sweater feeds the patriarchy- it gave money (around $20) to an industrial giant, profiting from a feminized work-force and the exploitation of the Global South.
The banana I ate with breakfast
It elevated the taste of my oatmeal. I got it in the caf, picked out of a basket filled with dozens and dozens of its kind.
I’m not sure where it came from. Most likely the Southern United States or a Central American country. Harvested by young women promised by the manufacturers an entrance to a career that could send their children to college; tricked by the “bootstraps” myth. Instead, the women who plucked this fruit have labored for decades without a pay raise, day after day, hour after hour, picking bananas without a glimpse of the dream they once hoped this job would help them achieve. All for that extra flavor in my oatmeal.
The computer I’m writing on
I’ve been using it since high school: writing stories, watching tv shows and movies, doing all my homework, accessing the internet. It adds so much convenience to my life, provides so much access to the world and knowledge.
It could have been built by a hidden, invisible globalized labor. Assembled in Silicon Valley by immigrants, women of color, unable to find work outside factories, denied white-collar jobs readily handed out to their white counterparts. It could have been created using industrialized home labor. The woman who assembled it, needing to make more money to help feed her children, enlisted her family and children’s help to put it together. In the process, they were exposed to toxic chemicals.
I’m benefiting from our globalized patriarchy. I’m benefiting from the feminization of factories and manual labor. I’m benefiting from the exploitation of the Global South and immigrants and women all around the world. To make my life more comfortable, to add convenience, uncountable working-class women are suffering.
Am I complicit? I thought as I began to write the post. I could change my behavior. I could demand action. But how? These very thoughts are still unresolved to me. For removing myself from this system which is so deeply ingrained in our society and economy (and I fear will remain that way for a long long time) would be removing myself from my life as I know it. Can I tweak my behaviors? Can I change my actions? I would hope that I can. Yet it will take much more reading and education and speaking out before I think I can have any concrete answers to these questions.
How can feminism continue to only focus on advancing the rights of privileged women and of American citizens? What is the solution to our nation’s complacency in this patriarchal network of abuse? Before we (as an American citizen, a white, middle-class woman, a member of the “first world”) can advance our own position, we must advocate for the rights and the elevation of those women that our misogynistic, racist, capitalist, globalized economy have harmed and suppressed. Anti-globalization must be a key focus for feminism and there must be a greater understanding of the feminized labor many women (progressives and change-makers alike) of the Global North are profiting from. Until feminists of the North become conscious of their (our) own participation and support of global sexist structures and revolt against it, there will never be true equality. We cannot fight for the advancement of our own rights while remaining complacent with a system that has been set up to privilege us and oppress women of the Global South.