Microcredit: “A political economy of shame”

It’s easy to understand the appeal of microcredit. Poor women from the Global South use loans as small as $20 to start businesses and lift themselves from poverty. The creditors make a profit when the loans are repaid. Win-win.
What do they say about things that look too good to be true?
A whopping 90 to 99 [...]

Read Full Post »

Best for whom?

I hear this said a lot even among people who describe themselves as liberal and progressive. Even among people who identify as feminists. That capitalism as an economic system may be flawed, but it’s certainly the best system that we have.
The best for whom?
It’s certainly not the best system for the workers at [...]

Read Full Post »

Scars

justicewalks’s moving reflections on her coming medical procedure (h/t bint) had me contemplating my own body. Specifically, the four-inch scar that runs from by bellybutton down my abdomen. I thought that the scar had long healed.
When my personal care physician here in the US first saw the scar, she asked if I had [...]

Read Full Post »

Disposable Targets

Eugenia Baja’s family began to receive worrisome text messages towards the end of 2007. First, the 25-year-old Filipina domestic worker in Riyadh said she could not send money for Christmas. Then in January 2008, Eugenia pleaded to her brother, “Please help me. Please find me.”
Eugenia texted that she felt cold all the time. [...]

Read Full Post »

Run Like a Girl

In the early 1990s, seventeen-year-old Nancy Navalta burst into Philippine track and field, running the 100 meter dash at 11.44 seconds. It’s an even more amazing feat considering how green she was. Nancy had no training. She just ran on sandy beaches with a sack of rocks slung over her shoulders.
Newspapers lauded [...]

Read Full Post »

Bodily Autonomy

In the spirit of picking your battles, I really tried to ignore the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines’ threat to deny communion and to campaign against Filipino politicians supporting reproductive health bills. But I’m still ticked off about it, and Karnythia’s post on bodily autonomy and Renee’s musings on patriarchal control over women’s [...]

Read Full Post »

Hunger

Over the past three months, have you “experienced hunger and did not have anything to eat?”
This was a question from the Social Weather Stations, a non-profit social research station in the Philippines. Their findings show that more Filipino families are going hungry more often. More Filipino families are answering the above question with [...]

Read Full Post »

Filipina caretaker case reconsidered

Juana Tejada, the Filipina caregiver who was being deported this August from Canada due to her cancer, has been granted an extension on her temporary work permit. She can stay until December 10, as the authorities continue to assess her case.
Ms. Tejada began working in Canada in 2003, via the Canada’s Live-In Caregiver program. [...]

Read Full Post »

What is to be done?

The appalling work conditions at the Cavite Export Processing Zone are, unfortunately, not unique to the Philippines.
These also happen in Mauritius.
In Kenya.
In Morocco. Sri Lanka. Thailand. Honduras. Colombia. Bangladesh.
But even faced with brutal labor repression, labor activists continue to work for unionization and workers’ rights. And activists in North America and Europe can [...]

Read Full Post »

Who are you fighting for?

Latoya at Racialicious challenges us to remember who we are fighting for.
Here’s my roundabout answer.
Following is a list of informal requirements to obtain a job as a factory worker at the Cavite Export Processing Zone in the Philippines:

female
18 to 24 years old
high school graduate, some college preferred
good English skills
diligent and hard-working
can work fourteen hour shifts, [...]

Read Full Post »