I enjoyed the way Enloe made the reader consider Nike's campaign to reach women buyers in juxtaposition with Nike's exploitation of the female worker. It further encourages me to be critical of advertising remembering that they want to make money, that is their sole objective, regardless of the image they present. I particularly enjoy the image below that tries to empower women by dealing with a controversial issue such as body image. However, it still over sexualizes women and contradicts with attitudes towards women in the factories. Here, women are encouraged to be strong because that strength makes money for the company while in the factories women are encouraged to be submissive and weak because that makes money for the company.
[sometimes my images do not show up so i've included the link as well] http://www.nike.com/nikewomen/us/v2/media/swf/wkcampaign/butt_1024x768.jpg
"Safe Keepers and Wage Earners" explained how Asian immigrants to America often have to juggle two identities. For women, this means that their communities expect them to make money in an American way while continuing to care for the family in an Asian (or conservative American) way. This pressure to do both creates a barrier for advancement in the workplace. Women do not want to sacrifice family by taking on time-intensive promotions. Shyam explains how coming out of law school women are half of the graduates seeking employment. However, by the time each generation of women reaches upper level positions and partnership in law firms they are only 10, 15, or 20 percent of the partners. Women have the capacity and the education to succeed but are kept from doing so by the pressure to maintain a family.
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ReplyDeleteAnuradha Shyam, Safe Keepers and Wage Earners
The narrator begins this excerpt by describing her life, as a recent promote to senior associate at a Big Four accounting firm. Shyam depicts the trials and tribulations of such a profession and goes on to say that she finds women who are able to balance corporate and personal issues, while finding time to raise their children, remarkable. This segues her into discussing the South Asian society in which she was born into and its influence on her views and expectations. In her childhood, although Indian women were encouraged to pursue liberal arts courses in college, their education was perceived as purely recreational and not intended for pursing careers. In this traditional society it was generally believed that a man should be the family breadwinner and a woman should be the homemaker. Furthermore, Shyam talks about her mother’s gender role as a primary homemaker in South Asia and how in the United States she had to balance a full time job and being a full time mother/wife. The author learned that the experiences of her family and her friends from the same cultural background testified to the notion that although Indian culture continues to westernize, immigrant families uphold the same traditions that they would if they were living in South Asia.
Research into gender inequality among these families led Shyam to examine domestic violence in South Asian immigrant communities. She found that women in these communities are left with few options. They are often left dependent on their spouses for money and, thus, trapped in abusive relationships; they often lack the essentials that would permit them to work; such as visas or strong English-language skills. She goes on to talk about the demanding expectations on second-generation South Asian women; they “are forced with the dual pressures of integrating South Asian values while also having to assimilate into American society” (Shyam, 178). Not only must these women do well in school, but they must also excel as daughters, sisters, wives, etc… They are expected to “safe keep” their culture and traditions for generations to come. Later in the passage, Shyam speaks from personal experience about her initiation into the “real world” as she transitioned from college to the workforce. She talks about her acquisition of certain skills that opposed attitudes learned by her culture. The author states that fewer women stay in these time consuming professions when faced with choosing between families and staying on the “fast track.” They opt out for part time jobs with fewer demands. As a result, many firms are more open to flexible work conditions. However, Shyam says that progress is slow and “the corporate culture must change first and become more open to its employees incorporating flexibility into their daily lives” (Shyam, 181).
An interesting question:
“The questions still remain for me: how can I ‘have it all?’…“(Shyam, 182)
Cynthia Enloe, “The Globetrotting Sneaker”
In “The Globetrotting Sneaker,” Enloe discusses the ways sneaker companies’ “global competitiveness” exploits women in particular Asian societies. Enloe writes that the main goal of company executives is monetary gain. Workers are silenced and their opportunities are diminished. Interestingly, Enloe writes about the consequences of private companies competing with big businesses. She says that, as a result, big businesses would further pit working women in industrialized nations against those in “developing” nations. This fosters the notion that they are rivals and silences women from speaking up against atrocious work environments because they fear that they will lose their job to other women. Additionally, Enloe discusses the ways sneaker giants, like Nike and Reebok, play a part in the exploitation of women.
In Anuradha Shyam’s “Safe Keepers and Wage Earners”, she talks a lot about her culture and how the women in her culture receive an education for primarily trivial purposes. It is almost like they are going through the motions because they know that their end goal is to become a housewife. In her South Asian culture the men are seen as the breadwinners and women are labeled as being housewives, which undoubtedly makes men superior to women. Between this and the abusive relationship conversation it was hard for me not to compare it to our culture now. Although our society, generally, is structured in a similar way to this South Asian culture, it is on a much lesser scale. Our society was more like this South Asian culture years ago and now with the feminist movement it has become much less severe. I cannot help but think about the Tiger Woods scandal while reading this piece. Tiger Woods was certainly an abusive husband. He cheated on Elin and got caught red handed. It seems that in Shyam’s culture this would have been generally acceptable. However, in our culture Elin had the right to a divorce and was given over $100 million dollars in a divorce settlement. This proves that women have, in fact, come a long way and while our culture may have been quite similar to this South Asian culture at a time, it is clear that we are much more progressive than most cultures. Enloe’s article also talked about the exploitation of women but it was more about how major companies contribute to the exploitation of women. My question to this is, don’t big companies contribute to the exploitation of everyone they employ in these third world nations? Women, children, men, etc?
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