Women and Migrant Labor
Economic conditions in developing countries have created the need for a new wave of migrant workers, predominantly young females. Turnover rate in many of these migrant jobs is very high due to harsh working conditions. This occurs on both a national and transnational basis. In Europe alone there are 3 million female migrant workers. The 1970s and 1980s have seen an increase in female migrant laborers in France and Belgium. Female migrants work in domestic occupations which are considered part of the informal sector and lack a degree of government regulation and protection. Minimum wages and work hour requirements are ignored and piece-rates are sometimes also implemented. Migrant labor allows large companies to keep up with the changes in the market and fashions but still keep production inexpensive at home. Women's wages are kept lower than men because they are not regarded as the primary source of income in the family.
Read more about this topic: Migrant Worker
Famous quotes containing the words women and, women, migrant and/or labor:
“Women and negroes, being seven-twelfths of the people, are a majority; and according to our republican theory, are the rightful rulers of the nation.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“For women the wage gap sets up an infuriating Catch-22 situation. They do the housework because they earn less, and they earn less because they do the housework.”
—Sylvia Ann Hewitt (20th century)
“As soon as the harvest is in, you’re a migrant worker. Afterwards just a bum.”
—Nunnally Johnson (1897–1977)
“When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans; and I remembered with as much pity as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone to the city to attend the oratorios.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)