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The masculinization of the Mexican maquiladoras
Review of Radical Political Economics 34 (2002) 3–17
The masculinization of the Mexican maquiladoras Tamar Diana Wilson∗ University of Missouri-St. Louis, Condominiums Aloha 301E, Paseo San Jose s/n, San Jose de los Cabos 23448, BCS, Mexico Received 2 September 1998; accepted 21 December 1999
Abstract Men’s involvement in the maquiladora labor force has increased more than 17 times between 1975 when men constituted 21.7 percent of the non-technician, non-management workers, and 1995 when men constituted 40.9 percent of the maquila workers. Is this occurring because the dearth of “maquila grade” female labor is fueling a more heterogeneous maquiladora labor force? Or is it that the proliferation of maquiladoras involves more plants with jobs traditionally typed as “masculine”? Or, is it possible that “docile, nimble-fingered” males have made their appearance on the labor market? This paper will attempt to answer these questions. © 2002 URPE. All rights reserved. JEL classification: D21; J21; J16 Keywords: Maquiladora labor; Feminization; Border Industrialization Program
1. Introduction The world-wide feminization of the work force of off-shore assembly manufacturing plants has received much commentary in studies of labor (e.g. Elson & Pearson, 1981; Standing, 1989). The maquiladora plants established under the Border Industrialization Program in 1965 on the northern Mexican border were no exception to the feminization process. Although originally envisioned as providing employment possibilities for the male farmworkers whose jobs were undercut by the termination of the Bracero Program in 1964 (Sklair, 1993: 46–47; Tiano, 1990: 199), the maquiladora industry immediately showed its preference for hiring young, relatively well-educated, single childless women, most of whom lived at home ∗
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with their parents, and thus, despite being vulnerable to patriarchal authority, were not the most economically vulnerable sector of the labor force.1 These “maquila grade” females were typically employed by the electrical and electronics assembly plants; the less capitalized garment and textile plants, with their less modern facilities and often sweatshop-like working conditions, had to be satisfied with an older, more poorly educated work force, the members of whom were often married or female heads of household (Fernández-Kelly, 1983: 4, 104–107; Tiano, 1990: 26–27). In the early stages of the maquiladora program, 8 of 10 line operators were women; women comprised at least 78 percent of the border maquiladora labor force until 1978, and 80 percent of the labor force in the Ciudad Juárez maquiladoras until 1983 (Brannon & Lucker, 1989: Table 1, p. 41, 42). Following the economic crisis and peso devaluation of 1982 and the economic restructuring which followed, the maquila labor force became increasingly more heterogeneous: older, married women and female heads of household entered all types of maquiladora plants in greater numbers (Tiano, 1990) as did increasing number of men (MacLachlan & Aguilar, 1998, p. 321). The trend has continued through the economic crisis of 1994. The proportion of men employed in the maquiladoras as workers (obreros)2 has increased from 21.7 percent in 1975 to 40.9 percent in 1995. By 1998, men constituted 43.4 percent of the maquila labor force (INEGI, 1999: 8). Several explanations have been offered for the increasing heterogeneity and masculinization of the maquiladora labor force. First, it has been argued that, following the explosive growth on maquiladora plants in the 1980s, there were simply not enough “maquila grade” females to fill the jobs being offered (Tiano, 1994; Brannon & Lucker, 1989). Thus, less “qualified” female labor (older, partnered or unpartnered women with dependent children) and male labor have been accessed. Second, because of a proliferation of plants engaged in what traditionally have
1 The Mexican state, however, also encouraged the Border Industrialization Program for other reasons: first, as a means to underwrite economic development along the economically depressed border; second, as a means to earn foreign exchange; and third, to curry favor among the “local comprador bourgeoisie” allied or wishing to ally with foreign capital (Sklair, 1993). Alleviating male unemployment was only one of several aims. When the maquiladora managers showed a preference for female labor, little was done to discourage them, as the Border Industrialization Program nevertheless was envisioned as meeting the other goals. This is in stark contrast to the Irish case, where, in order to maintain the traditional family roles of husband as breadwinner and wife as his dependent, ideas incorporated in the Irish constitution, the Industrial Development Authority of Ireland specified that at least 75 percent of the export-processing jobs be reserved for men (Pyle, 1990a; see also Pyle, 1990b). In Mexico, however, maquiladora management does try to screen out pregnant women; a pregnancy text is required before a woman is contracted. This is due to the reluctance of maquiladora management to pay the legislated 3 months leave of absence with pay due to women after giving birth (Compa, 1999: 14–15). This practice has been held to be contrary to the provisions of the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), the labor agreement included in NAFTA negotiations, and is presently under negotiation. 2 I will be using worker (obrero) throughout in the same sense used by INEGI, the National Institute of Statistics in Mexico, viz., all those employed by the maquiladoras who are neither technicians nor managers/administrators. It has been pointed out that some male workers may be involved in warehousing and distribution activities rather than detailed line work, and thus not be production/assembly workers. Furthermore, there may be a higher proportion of male production workers on night shifts and women on day shifts. I thank Rebecca Hovey for these insights. Unfortunately, given the data available, it is difficult to determine if these patterns are at work in masculinizing the maquiladora labor force.
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been stereotyped as “masculine” jobs, more men are being employed in higher proportions in certain kinds of jobs than women (Wilson, 1993). As a variation on this theme, it has been argued that increasingly high-tech jobs are occupied by men who are expected to have higher “mechanical” skills than women (Alegr´ıa & Coubés, 1997). Nash (1983) points out that in the beginning stages of industrialization, the most vulnerable workers, usually women, are employed. This was true historically in the now industrialized countries as it is in the contemporary industrializing countries. However, as industries become more capital intensive, more men are employed, despite women being capable of doing the work. One must ask: why do men begin to replace women, especially in those cases where male-controlled unions are not strong? Third, it has been suggested that the work force in general has come to know of the characteristics of workers preferred by maquiladora managers, so that a labor force of “docile, nimble-fingered” men have begun to present themselves for work in the maquiladora plants (Sklair, 1993).
2. The masculinization of the maquiladoras Whereas between 1975 and 1995, the number of maquiladora workers (obreros) increased 9.2 times, from 57,850 to 531,729, in the same period male workers increased 17.3 times, from 12,570 in 1975 to 217,557 in 1995. In 1998, 355,022 men worked in productive jobs in the maquiladoras. As can be seen in Table 1, the proportion of male workers comprised about 22 percent of the maquiladora labor force between 1975 and 1982. By 1984, 2 years after the crisis, they comprised 29.1 percent of the maquila labor force (excluding technicians and managers/administrators), by 1990; 39.1 percent, and by 1998; 4 years after the peso devaluation of 1994, 43.4 percent. By 2000 men comprised 44.8 percent of the maquiladora workers. The proliferation of maquiladoras is documented in Table 2; from 620 plants in 1980, employing an average of 193 workers, maquiladora plants increased to 3,590 in 2000, employing an average of 358 workers. Many of the smaller maquiladoras went out of business due to economic crises; 29 disappeared from view in 1994. However, Fortune 500 companies, some of which employ as many as 2,000 workers, thrived (Sklair, 1993). Notably, some smaller maquiladoras returned after 1996, when the average number of workers per plant reached 312. The masculinization illustrated in Table 1 is apparent in the fact that whereas the total maquiladora labor force increased by 504.9 percent between 1980 and 1996, the female component increased by only 354.0 percent and the male component by 1,018.9 percent. Nonetheless, maquiladoras, at least in Baja California, employ a higher proportion of the female labor force than of the male labor force. In that state maquiladoras employed 1 percent of the male labor force in 1970, 2 percent in 1980, and 10 percent in 1990. Maquiladoras accounted for 27 percent of women’s employment in Baja California in 1990 (Tiano, 1990: 67).
3. The lack of “maquila grade” female labor Arguments concerning the lack of “maquila grade” females as a reason for hiring more mature women and for hiring men take two forms. One stresses demographic reasons: the
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Table 1 Proportions of male and female workers (obreros) in the maquiladoras (nation-wide) Year
Total
Total male
Total female
Male (%)
Female (%)
1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
57850 64670 68187 78570 95818 102020 110684 105383 125278 165505 173874 203894 248638 391379 349602 360358 374827 406879 440683 477032 531729 616617 731471 823561 921623 1040077
12575 13686 14999 18205 21981 23140 24993 23990 32004 48215 53832 64812 84535 110927 135081 140919 148900 161271 178512 192991 217557 257575 309774 357905 406459 466004
45275 50985 53188 60365 78837 78880 85691 81393 93274 117290 120042 139082 164103 190452 214521 219439 225927 245608 262171 284041 314172 359042 421697 465656 515164 574073
21.7 21.2 22.0 23.2 23.0 22.7 22.6 22.8 25.2 29.1 31.0 31.8 34.0 36.8 38.6 39.1 39.7 39.6 40.5 40.5 40.9 41.7 42.3 43.5 44.1 44.8
78.3 78.8 78.0 76.8 77.0 77.3 77.4 77.2 74.5 70.9 69.0 68.2 66.0 63.2 61.4 60.9 60.3 60.4 59.5 59.5 59.1 58.2 57.7 56.5 55.9 55.2
Sources: Brannon & Lucker, 1989: Table 1, p. 41; INEGI, 1996: 8; INEGI, 1997: 13–17; INEGI, 1999: 8; INEGI, 2001: 8.
rapid expansion of maquiladoras in the 1980s simply used up all available young, single, secondary school educated female labor. Maquiladora plants were thus forced to look to other sectors of the population, including unemployed men and women located in the interior of Mexico, to fulfill their labor force needs (Brannon & Lucker, 1989). The decentralization of the maquiladoras, their gradual expansion into the interior of Mexico where unemployment is higher and minimum wages lower, is shown by the fact that in 1980, 89.1 percent of maquiladoras were located in border cities, but by 1996 only 81.1 percent were (INEGI, 1996: 8). Notably, Mexico is divided into a number of wage zones, with the minimum wage being lower in the interior than along the border (see Sklair (1993) for a discussion of these wage zones). A second argument explaining the lack of adequate maquila grade female labor examines the inadequacy of the minimum wage. Although the minimum wage is unerringly paid in the maquiladoras, it is not simply a wage floor, but also a wage ceiling, which, it is speculated, maquiladora owners and managers have informally agreed not to surpass (Sklair, 1993: 178–79; Tiano, 1990: 148–149, 152; Brannon & Lucker, 1989: 66, footnote 2). Determined to keep
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Table 2 Number of maquiladoras and average work force (technicians and management/administrators included) Year
Maquiladoras (all Mexico)
Maquiladora personnel employed (all)
Average personnel per maquiladora
1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
620 605 585 600 672 760 890 1125 1396 1655 1703 1914 2075 2114 2085 2130 2411 2717 2983 3297 3590
119546 130973 127048 150867 199684 211968 249833 305253 369489 429725 446436 467352 505698 542074 583044 648263 753708 731471 817877 1140528 1285007
192.8 216.5 217.1 251.4 297.1 278.9 280.7 271.3 264.7 259.7 262.1 244.2 243.7 256.4 279.6 304.3 312.6 269.2 274.2 345.9 357.9
Sources: INEGI, 1996: 2, 8; INEGI, 1997: 4; INEGI, 1999: 2, 8; INEGI, 2001: 2, 8.
their wage bill to a minimum, the maquiladoras have been forced to hire the most vulnerable of laborers, laborers who do not display the ideal characteristics of the original maquiladora labor force. Evidence exists that as many as one-third of the “maquila grade” female workers previously employed by maquiladoras have left the industry to work in the expanding, and also feminized, service sector where wages are often higher, work autonomy greater, and where, unlike in the maquiladora industry, job ladders exist (Tiano, 1990: 160, 162). However, it must be noted that maquiladoras continue to be an important, and increasingly important, source of employment for women. Despite the fact that more men are employed in the maquiladoras, there have also been astounding increases in the absolute numbers of women production workers. Whereas in 1980, 78,800 women were employed in the maquiladoras, this number had increased to 219,438 in 1990, and more than doubled again to 574,073 by 2000 (INEGI, 2001: 8).
4. Gender stratification of the maquiladora work force It has been suggested that the increasing diversity in the kinds of maquildoras located in Mexico, especially with the introduction of high-tech industries, has spawned more jobs stereotyped as “masculine” (Tiano, 1990: 229). This is closely related to the idea that some kinds of
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manufacturing/assembly jobs are stereotyped as “masculine” and others as “feminine” whether in the First World or in the Third World (Elson & Pearson, 1981: 92; Nash & Fernández-Kelly, 1983; Sklair, 1993: 171). It has been argued, for example, in a study of the maquila industry in Nogales, Sonora, that there is a male/female segmentation of the work force into high and low skilled jobs within individual maquiladoras (Kopinak, 1995). It is also maintained that more men are employed in the increasing numbers of Fordist manufacturing for re-export plants (Wilson, 1993). A study conducted in the manufacturing industry (including maquiladora assembly plants) in 11 Mexican states, however, led to the conclusion that high-tech industries are the most feminized (Alegr´ıa & Coubés, 1997: 33). On the other hand, distinguishing between labor intensive assembly plants and Fordist and post-Fordist manufacturing maquiladoras, Wilson (1993: 151) in a study of 71 maquiladoras found the most intense concentration of male production workers in the rapidly proliferating Fordist manufacturing plants, where they make up 49 percent of the labor force. In 1989 in the post-Fordist plants, 66 percent of the labor force was female; women make up 63 percent of the work force in the labor intensive assembly plants (the traditional maquiladora plant type), and only 51 percent in the Fordist manufacturing plants (Wilson, 1993: Table 9.2, p. 147). That there are differences in the proportions of male and female workers according to plant type can be seen in Table 3. Whereas less than 35 percent of the textile and apparel workers were men prior to the 1994 peso crisis, more than 72 percent of the line operators in furniture and fixture manufacturing was male. Yet noticeable also are the increasing proportions of men in the years between 1982 and 1996 in maquilas where women traditionally made up the vast majority of the line operators. Thus, men’s involvement in the textile and apparel industry increased from 16.3 percent in 1982 to 37.8 percent in 1996; and their involvement in electrical and electronics assembly increased from 19.3 percent in 1982 to 37.3 percent in 1996. Conversely, women have increased their presence in furniture and fixture assembly from 18.9 percent in 1982 to 27.4 percent in 1996. Between 1991 and 1996, the
Table 3 Changes in proportions of the maquiladora workers (excluding technicians and managers) by maquiladora type, 1982–96 Maquiladora type
1982
1986
1991
1993
1996
33.7 34.7 54.3 72.6
33.5 35.2 54.5 72.3
37.8 37.3 54.0 72.6
Percentage of women workers (obreros) employed by maquiladora type Textiles and apparel 83.7 76.4 66.3 Electrical and electronics 80.7 73.7 65.3 Motor vehicles and accessories 64.2 53.3 45.7 Furniture and fixtures 18.9 24.8 27.4
66.5 64.8 45.5 27.7
62.2 62.7 46.0 27.4
Percentage of men workers (obreros) employed by maquiladora type Textiles and apparel 16.3 23.6 Electrical and electronics 19.3 26.3 Motor vehicles and accessories 35.8 46.7 Furniture and fixtures 81.1 75.2
Source: Brannon & Lucker, 1989: Table 4, p. 51; INEGI, 1997: Table 3.2, pp. 45–50.
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number of women employed in motor vehicles and accessory manufacturing increased by 14,116, while the number of men increased by 16,130 (INEGI, 1997: 45–50). A little over 2000 more men than women were hired in these 5 years, showing the masculine bias of the industry, but not by much. Men did increase their presence, however, as they were less than half of the labor force in motor vehicles and accessories in 1982 (35.8 percent), but constituted more than half of the labor force by 1991 (54.3 percent), an advantage which they have maintained. Notably, the Mexican National Institute charged with gathering statistics, Instituto Nacional de Estádistica, Geograf´ıa e Informática (INEGI), uses the term maquiladora to refer to plants involved in “partial manufacturing, assembly, or packaging, realized by any business which is not the original manufacturer” (INEGI, 1997: vii, translation mine; see also Warner, 1993: 183). Maquiladoras, strictly speaking, were not involved in the complete manufacture of items, were usually financed with foreign capital, and were taxed only on the value added by the labor force once the items were re-exported to the United States. Whereas Fordist and post-Fordist methods may be utilized in these partial manufacturing, assembly, and packaging processes (Wilson, 1993: 135–136), as will be highlighted below many multinational companies have established subsidiaries in Mexico involving the complete manufacture of a product (Brannon & James, 1994). These too may be divided into those using Fordist (relatively masculinized) and post-Fordist (substantially feminized) manufacturing processes.
5. The creation of “docile, nimble-fingered” men The growing heterogeneity of the maquiladora labor force may be linked to persistent economic crises, repeated peso devaluations, falling real wages, and rampant inflation throughout Mexico.3 A number of scholars have noted that households reacted to the economic crisis of 1982 by sending more teenage sons and daughters as well as children under 15, all of whom would otherwise have been studying, into the labor market; married women also increased their presence in the labor force (Bener´ıa, 1991: 172; 1992: 92; González de la Rocha, 1988: 214; 1991: 117–119; 1994; Roberts, 1991). As Peña (1997: 57) points out, “Typically families have to put several members into the maquila labor market because one worker’s earnings are simply insufficient to support an individual, let alone an entire family.” By forcing families to send their adolescents into the labor force, though maintaining wages too low to provide a minimum wage, the maquiladoras “create” new categories of workers to labor in their plants (Anderson & de la Rosa, 1989; Anderson, 1990). In interior cities such as Guadalajara, where fewer formal sector maquiladora plants exist than on the border, many of these new entrants gained income in informal sector activities; they also represent a potential reserve labor force
3 As Peña (1997: 57) notes: “Real wages (adjusted for inflation) in the maquiladoras declined from $6.37 per day in 1982 to $3.72 in 1980 . . . This put real wages in the maquilas at a rate that is lower than the 1967 average of $3.80 per day.” This wage was cut to less than half in dollar terms after the peso devaluation of 1994. Prior to the crisis $1 was exchangeable for 3.2 pesos; by 1995 the value of a dollar superseded 8 pesos; and presently (1999) almost 10. Minimum wages are reckoned in pesos, but paid by the maquiladoras by exchanging dollars.
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for maquiladoras located on the border and elsewhere in Mexico.4 The sending of increasing numbers of family members into the labor force has also occurred after the most recent crisis, in 1994. As many Mexican-owned businesses were bankrupted by the peso crises, and as the maquiladoras—seduced by the promise of even lower wage bills—proliferated, unemployed or underemployed Mexican male heads of household and their young, single, and recently married sons, sought work in the maquiladora plants. Sklair (1993: 171–172) has pointed out, “From various countries and over various ‘feminized’ occupations in the assembly industries has come a litany of docile, undemanding ‘nimble-fingered’ women workers uninterested in joining unions or standing up for their rights.”5 Opposed to this litany was an image of aggressive, demanding, militant men. However, “Once the image of the ‘ideal’ maquila worker is institutionalized and accepted by the working class along the border, the need to employ women in preference to men diminishes, and job opportunities for docile, undemanding, and nimble-fingered, nonunion, and nonmilitant men open up” (Sklair, 1993: 173; see also McClenaghan on the Dominican Republic, McClenaghan, 1997: 24). Given the increasing inadequacy of the going minimum wage to sustain a worker, especially in the face of repeated peso devaluations and runaway inflation, one must ask what has converted males into a docile, nimble-fingered, nonmilitant labor force. Partially, it seems due to the decline of other employment opportunities for males, bankruptcies of Mexican-owned businesses caused by the fall of the peso and burgeoning interest rates, privatization of land in the countryside under constitutional changes fostered by Salinas de Gortari, and an over-saturated informal sector in urban centers.6 In some traditional male sectors, such as construction work, competition for jobs is so great that in some states the weekly salary has barely risen since the last peso devaluation, despite the fact that the peso has less than 40 percent of its pre-1994 buying power. Partially, as well, interest in maquiladora employment is due to the draw of side benefits provided with the job, such as access to the Mexican Social Security System (Fernández-Kelly, 1983: 107; Tiano, 1990: 157–158), for the worker and his spouse and dependent children, or, if single, his siblings under the age of 18. Notably, women’s maquiladora employment also permits her to provide insurance for the family’s dependent minors.
4
Notably, as Brannon & Lucker (1989: 65) point out: “As labor markets tightened in major maquiladora centers on the border, the number of firms in non-border cities increased. In the period 1983–1987, the number of maquiladoras increased from 71 to 120 and employment grew more rapidly in the interior than it did on the border. Firms were attracted by lower wages and more favorable labor market conditions,” i.e. higher rates of unemployment. By the end of 1996 more than 10,000 workers in the state of Jalisco, where Guadalajara is located, were employed by 64 export-oriented maquiladoras (INEGI, 1996: 3; INEGI, 1997: 18). 5 Nonetheless, women have challenged this image of the docile worker by their shop-floor resistances, including slow-downs, and by their strike activities (see, for example, Baird and McCaughan, 1975; Peña, 1991, 1997; Young, 1991; Sklair, 1993: 57–58). 6 As a case in point, it has been estimated that the population of street vendors has increased 400 percent in the past 10 years in Mexican metropolitan centers (Rivera, 1998).
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6. Regional differences There has been an increase in the number of maquiladoras located in the interior states; employing 7.8 percent of the maquiladora workers in 1991, they employed 14.4 percent of that labor force in 1996 (Table 4). Notably, maquiladoras in the interior state resemble early maquiladoras on the border, with their higher female participation as line workers (Table 4). Although the statistics available do not permit easy interpretation of labor force differences between border cities and interior cities within border states, greater increases in interior maquiladoras are found if border cities are contrasted with all interior cities. For example, in the state of Chihuaha, Ciudad Juárez is a border city, but Chihuaha is an interior city: both have maquiladoras, although in 1996 Ciudad Juárez’s maquiladoras employed more than five times as many maquiladora personnel than Chihuaha (INEGI, 1997: Table 2.2, p. 24) and continued to employ almost five times as many in 2000 (INEGI, 2001: 60). Nonetheless, non-border maquiladoras, including those located within border states, rose from almost 20 percent in 1988 to 27 percent in 1992 and to 32.9 percent by mid-1998 (Sklair, 1993: 244; Table 7.2: 144; SECOFI, 1998: 28). There is thus an increasing probability for maquiladoras to locate in non-border cities. In the border states the proportion of male production workers in the maquiladoras was 41.2 percent in 1991 and 43.2 percent in 1996, showing a slight increase in the male/female ratio in the maquiladoras after the signing of NAFTA in early 1994 and the devaluation of the peso in late 1994. In the interior states, the mean male line worker participation rate was 27.4 percent in 1991 and 31 percent in 1996. Only Puebla’s maquiladora labor force had roughly the same proportion of males (42.6 percent) as the border states in 1996. On the other hand, in the border states of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas, male workers were proportionately fewer than in other border states. Notably, in Jalisco, 78.2 percent of the maquiladora line operatives were women. The high rates of female participation rates in the interior states is noteworthy, however, due to the fact that neo-patriarchal values, such as the stress on the role of the male breadwinner and keeping wives at home, are stronger in many interior states than along the border (Wilson, 1998). Several of the interior states, especially Jalisco, Durango, and Guanajuato, are states of high recurrent immigration of males seeking work in the United States (Jones, 1995: 10–11). Wives left behind by husbands and sons often seek wage work for themselves and/or their daughters when faced by irregular or inadequate remittances, thereby subverting the gender order (Mummert, 1994; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994). This fact partially explains the availability of women for employment in those internal states with high levels of male migration to the United States. The maquiladora managers’ preference for female labor has also been recreated in the interior states. Nonetheless, despite the maquiladora managers having shown preference for female labor in the interior, once having adopted the prevailing standard of the “ideal” worker, non-migrant or returning migrant men, pinched by economic crisis in Mexico and the repercussions of employer sanctions in the United States, seem to be seeking work in the interior maquiladoras to a greater extent. As other researchers have noted, economic crisis and the low minimum wages maintained by Mexico’s federal government, necessitating several workers per household, are forcing women into the labor market (González de la Rocha,
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1988, 1991; Kopinak, 1995) at the same time that men are seeking jobs previously typed as “feminized.” Thus, economic crisis conditions provide another explanation of women’s entry into the maquiladora labor force in the interior, as well as men’s.
7. Speculations of the effects of NAFTA NAFTA’s effects on the maquiladora industry are still subject to speculation since several of the NAFTA provisions do not go into effect until 2001. Up to 100 percent of maquiladora production will be permitted to be sold in the domestic market by that year; currently only 50 percent of maquiladora production can be sold in Mexico. By 2001 maquiladoras will have no economic advantage over any other type of foreign or domestically financed factory (Brannon & James, 1994: 5–7). Several decrees issued by the Mexican government have already affected the maquiladora sector. Whereas in earlier years only maquiladoras benefited from tariff exemptions on their inputs, between 1983 and 1987 the Mexican government exempted more than 8,000 items previously subject to import taxes from these tariffs; Mexico also reduced maximum tariff levels from 100 to 20 percent during the same period (Brannon & James, 1994: 2). In 1989, a governmental decree permitted 100 percent foreign ownership for investments previously restrained by a demand for 51 percent Mexican ownership. The decree also encourages maquiladoras “to make the transition from simple product assembly for export to more substantial manufacturing for the domestic market (Sklair, 1993: 241). Fordist (relatively masculinized with 49 percent of the work force being male) and post-Fordist (substantially feminized with over 65 percent of the work force being female) manufacturing plants are involved in this “more substantial” production (Wilson, 1993: Table 9.2, p. 147). Notably, many of the multinational manufacturing plants are located in the interior states: “IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Wang have plants in the interior of Mexico producing for both the domestic and export markets. Ford has invested almost $1 billion in a plant in Hermosillo [an interior city in the border state of Sonora] that turns out Mercury Tracers; Nissan Mexico is investing that amount in an automobile plant in Aquascalientes; and Puebla boasts the only Volkswagen production in North America (Business Week 1990)” (Brannon & James, 1994: 7–8). There are several questions regarding how NAFTA will affect the gender composition of the maquiladora/manufacturing labor force. Will the border location continue to be favored, or will more and more plants locate in the interior? Will women’s proportion of the labor force in the interior of the country continue to remain higher than average, or will men gradually make inroads as they have done in the border cities? Will there be a shift from labor intensive assembly to greater numbers of Fordist and post-Fordist manufacturing plants? Will the growing number of manufacturing plants be segmented by gender, with Fordist plants continuing to employ relatively more men than other types of plants and post-Fordist plants employing primarily women? Some scholars argue that more plants, assembly and manufacturing (partial or complete), will be established in the interior due to ample supplies of female laborers, lower wages yet greater stability of the labor force, and closer access to the domestic market (Brannon & James, 1994: 7–8). Others argue that U.S. owned or controlled plants will continue to cluster at the
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border due to easier access to inputs and materials from the United States, the ability of higher management to live in the United States and commute to work, and the easy access to the U.S. market (Picou & Peluchon, 1995: 78–80; Sklair, 1993: 244, 262). Evidence provided above suggests that more and more plants are locating in the interior, although almost 70 percent remain on the border. Writing in the early 1990s, Wilson (1993: 152) found that “the most rapidly growing segments of the maquiladora industry are the Fordist manufacturers—especially in the interior— and the labor intensive assembly plants, especially along the border.” Since Fordist plants are becoming typed as “masculine,” more men can be expected to present themselves for work in these enterprises. As macroeconomic crisis translates into the crisis of the household economy, more men can also be expected to present themselves for labor-intensive assembly work, which they have consistently done over the last decade and a half. One impact that NAFTA will have on the country-wide will foment an expanding labor force, both male and female, for employment of all types. Cheap, imported corn is expected to throw into bankruptcy small farmers who, with constitutional changes effected under President Salinas de Gortari (1988–94), can mortgage or sell land previously protected from alienation by collective ownership (Foley, 1995). Rural exodus to the cities is an expected result, with family members thus becoming a reserve army of labor for the manufacturing and assembly plants. Embattled by economic crises, an unstable peso, and inflation, more docile, nimble-fingered men will be found waiting outside the factory gates.7
8. Conclusions Without intensive survey research the reasons why increasing numbers of men entering the maquiladoras can only be surmised. At least four forces seem to be at work, however. First, despite the fact maquila grade (relatively educated) female laborers are often finding alternative employment that suits them better, massive increases in the female maquiladora labor force are apparent. Increasing numbers of plants have led to the employment of 462,855 women production workers, which is 243,416 more women than in 1990. While relatively higher proportions of men are being employed, in absolute numbers both more men and more women have been employed each year since the establishment of the maquiladora program. Second, young men who might otherwise be studying are joining their sisters and entering the maquila labor force as part of the household sustenance strategies under conditions of economic crisis. Third, traditionally “masculine” types of work are being offered by the maquiladoras, using Fordist manufacturing processes and employing higher proportions of men than the traditional labor-intensive assembly plants or post-Fordist manufacturing plants (Wilson, 1993). These
7 In late 2001 and early 2002 newspapers in Mexico and the United States reported a decline in the number of maquiladoras along the U.S.-Mexican border. It is speculated that the companies moved to Central America and/or China where wage rates are even lower than in Mexico’s interior and southern states. Over 200,000 employees of maquiladoras in Mexico were laid off in the past year or so. What this portends for the composition of the maquiladora labor force is still to be seen. I would like to thank Hazel Dayton Gunn for forwarding me the New York Times, December 26, 2001 article on the decline of the maquiladoras.
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partial manufacturing plants as well as complete manufacturing plants will most probably increase as NAFTA provisions go into effect; so too will the available work force, both male and female. Finally, and most importantly, due to recurrent economic crises linked to successive peso devaluations, economic restructuring, high male underemployment and unemployment, the precipitous fall in real wages, and persistent inflation, male workers are becoming docile, nimble-fingered, and non-militant, thus bearing the traits of the ideal maquiladora labor force. Acknowledgments I would like to thank David Barkin, Rebecca Hovey, and Laurie Nisonoff for their careful editing and suggestions which helped to make the article better. The responsibility for the final product, of course, rests with me. References Alegr´ıa, T., & Coubés, M. L. (1997). Determinates de la concentración del empleo feminino: diferencias regionales y sectoriales en el norte de Mexico. In Proceedings of the paper presented at the Latin American studies association conference. Guadalajara, Mexico. Anderson, J. B. (1990). Maquiladoras and border industrialisation: impact on economic development in Mexico. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 5(1), 5–9. Anderson, J. B., & de la Rosa, M. (1989). Estrateg´ıas de sobreviviencia entre las familias pobres de la frontera. Memorias de fronteras Iberoamericanos ayer y hoy. Tijuana: Instituto Historico, UNAM-UABC. Baird, P., & McCaughan, E. (1975). Hit and run: U.S. runaway shops on the Mexican border. In Proceedings of the North American congress on Latin America. NACLA Report, July–August. Bener´ıa, L. (1991). Structural adjustment, the labour market and the household: the case of Mexico. In G. Standing, & V. Tokman (Eds.), Toward social adjustment: labour market issues in structural adjustment (pp. 161–183). Geneva: International Labour Office. Bener´ıa, L. (1992). The Mexican debt crisis: restructuring the economy and the household. In L. Bener´ıa, & S. Feldman (Eds.), Unequal burden: economic crises, persistent poverty and women’s work. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Brannon, J. T., & James, D. D. (1994). Cometh the NAFTA, whither the maquiladora? Reflections on the future of industrialization in northern Mexico. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 9(2), 1–22. Brannon, J. T., & Lucker, G. W. (1989). The impact of Mexico’s economic crisis on the demographic composition of the maquiladora labor force. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 4(1), 39–70. Compa, L. (1999). International labor rights and NAFTA’s labor side agreement. LASA Forum, 30(2), 14–17. Elson, D., & Pearson, R. (1981). Nimble fingers make cheap workers: an analysis of women’s employment in third world export manufacturing. Feminist Review, Spring, 87–107. Fernández-Kelly, M. P. (1983). For we are sold, I and my people: women and industry in Mexico’s frontier. Albany: State University of New York Press. Foley, M. W. (1995). Privatizing the countryside: the Mexican peasant movement and neoliberal reform. Latin American Perspectives, 22(1), 59–76. González de la Rocha, M. (1988). Economic crisis, domestic reorganisation and women’s work in Guadalajara, Mexico. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 7(2), 207–223. González de la Rocha, M. (1991). Family well-being, food consumption, and survival strategies during Mexico’s economic crisis. In M. González de la Rocha, & A. E. Latap´ı (Eds.), Social responses to Mexico’s economic crisis of the 1980s (pp. 115–128). San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California. González de la Rocha, M. (1994). The resources of poverty: women and survival in a Mexican city. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
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Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. (1994). Gendered transitions: Mexican experiences of immigration. Berkeley: University of California Press. INEGI (1996). Industr´ıa maquiladora de exportación. Aguascalientes, Aquascalientes: Instituto Nacional de Estádistica, Geograf´ıa e Informatica. INEGI (1997). Estadistica de la industria maquiladora de exportac´ıon. Aguascalientes, Aquascalientes: Instituto Nacional de Estádistica, Geograf´ıa e Informatica. INEGI (1999). Industria maquiladora de exportac´ıon. Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes: Instituto Nacional de Estádistica, Geograf´ıa e Informatica. INEGI (2001). Industria maquiladora de exportac´ıon. Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes: Instituto Nacional de Estádistica, Geograf´ıa e Informatica. Jones, R. C. (1995). Ambivalent journey: U.S. migration and economic mobility in north–central Mexico. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. Kopinak, K. (1995). Gender as a vehicle for subordination of women maquiladora workers in Mexico. Latin American Perspectives, 22(1), 30–48. MacLachlan, I., & Aguilar, A. G. (1998). Maquiladora myths: locational and structural change in Mexico’s export manufacturing industry. The Professional Geographer, 50(3), 315–330. McClenaghan, S. (1997). Women, work, and empowerment: romanticizing the reality. In E. Dore (Ed.), Gender politics in Latin America: debates in theory and practice (pp. 19–35). New York: Monthly Review Press. Mummert, G. (1994). From metate to despate: rural Mexican women’s salaried labor and the redefinition of gendered spaces and roles. In J. Fowler-Salamini, & M. K. Vaughn (Eds.), Women of the Mexican countryside, 1850–1990, 192–209. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. Nash, J. (1983). The impact of the changing international division of labor on different sectors of the labor force. In J. Nash, & M. P. Fernández-Kelly (Eds.), Women, men and the international division of labor (pp. 3–38). Albany: State University of New York. Nash, J., & Fernández-Kelly, M. P. (1983). Women, men and the international division of labor. Albany: State University of New York Press. Peña, D. (1991). Tortuosidad: shop floor struggles of female maquiladora workers. In V. L. Ru´ız, & S. Tiano (Eds.), Women on the U.S.-Mexico border (pp. 129–154). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Peña, D. G. (1997). The terror of the machine: technology, work, gender & ecology on the U.S.-Mexico border. Austin, TX: Center for Mexican American Studies. Picou, A., & Peluchon, E. (1995). The Texas–Mexico maquila industry: expectations for the future. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 10(2), 75–86. Pyle, J. L. (1990a). Export-led development and the underemployment of women: the impact of discriminatory development policy in the republic of Ireland. In K. Ward (Ed.), Women workers and global restructuring (pp. 85–112). Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, Cornell University. Pyle, J. L. (1990b). Female employment and export-led development in Ireland: labour market impact of state-reinforced gender inequality in the household. In S. Strichter, & J. L. Parpart (Eds.), Women, employment and the family in the international division of labor. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Rivera, A. (1998). Creció 4000 percent el ambulantaje en municipios metropolitanos. El Nacional, August 12, 27 (Mexico, DF). Roberts, B. (1991). The changing nature of informal employment: the case of Mexico. In G. G. Standing, & V. Tokman (Eds.), Toward social adjustment: labour market issues in structural adjustment (pp. 115–140). Geneva: International Labour Office. SECOFI (Secretar´ıa de Comercio y Fomento Industrial) (1998). Informe de SECOFI: invirtió mil 100 mmd la industr´ıa maquiladora. El Nacional, September 15 (Mexico, DF). Standing, G. (1989). Global feminization through flexible labor. World Development, 17(7), 1077–1095. Sklair, L. (1993). Assembling for development: the maquila industry in Mexico and the United States (2nd ed.). San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California. Tiano, S. (1990). Maquiladora women: a new category of workers? In K. Ward (Ed.), Women workers and global restructuring. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, Cornell University. Tiano, S. (1994). Patriarchy on the line: labor, gender and ideology in the Mexican maquila industry. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
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Warner, J. A. (1993). The sociological impact of the maquiladoras. In K. Fatemi (Ed.), The maquiladora industry: economic solution or problem? (pp. 183–198). New York: Praeger. Wilson, P. A. (1993). The new maquiladoras: flexible production in low-wage regions. In K. Fatemi (Ed.), The maquiladora industry: economic solution or problem? (pp. 135–158). New York: Praeger. Wilson, T. D. (1998). Micro-, meso-, and macropatterns of women’s migration to Colonia Popular, Mexicali, Baja California. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 8(2), 63–82. Young, G. (1991). Gender-identification and working class solidarity among maquila workers in Ciudad Juárez. In V. L. Ru´ız, & S. Tiano (Eds.), Women on the U.S.-Mexico border (pp. 105–128). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
The masculinization of the Mexican maquiladoras Tamar Diana Wilson∗ University of Missouri-St. Louis, Condominiums Aloha 301E, Paseo San Jose s/n, San Jose de los Cabos 23448, BCS, Mexico Received 2 September 1998; accepted 21 December 1999
Abstract Men’s involvement in the maquiladora labor force has increased more than 17 times between 1975 when men constituted 21.7 percent of the non-technician, non-management workers, and 1995 when men constituted 40.9 percent of the maquila workers. Is this occurring because the dearth of “maquila grade” female labor is fueling a more heterogeneous maquiladora labor force? Or is it that the proliferation of maquiladoras involves more plants with jobs traditionally typed as “masculine”? Or, is it possible that “docile, nimble-fingered” males have made their appearance on the labor market? This paper will attempt to answer these questions. © 2002 URPE. All rights reserved. JEL classification: D21; J21; J16 Keywords: Maquiladora labor; Feminization; Border Industrialization Program
1. Introduction The world-wide feminization of the work force of off-shore assembly manufacturing plants has received much commentary in studies of labor (e.g. Elson & Pearson, 1981; Standing, 1989). The maquiladora plants established under the Border Industrialization Program in 1965 on the northern Mexican border were no exception to the feminization process. Although originally envisioned as providing employment possibilities for the male farmworkers whose jobs were undercut by the termination of the Bracero Program in 1964 (Sklair, 1993: 46–47; Tiano, 1990: 199), the maquiladora industry immediately showed its preference for hiring young, relatively well-educated, single childless women, most of whom lived at home ∗
Tel.: +52-114-40585. E-mail address: [email protected] (T.D. Wilson).
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with their parents, and thus, despite being vulnerable to patriarchal authority, were not the most economically vulnerable sector of the labor force.1 These “maquila grade” females were typically employed by the electrical and electronics assembly plants; the less capitalized garment and textile plants, with their less modern facilities and often sweatshop-like working conditions, had to be satisfied with an older, more poorly educated work force, the members of whom were often married or female heads of household (Fernández-Kelly, 1983: 4, 104–107; Tiano, 1990: 26–27). In the early stages of the maquiladora program, 8 of 10 line operators were women; women comprised at least 78 percent of the border maquiladora labor force until 1978, and 80 percent of the labor force in the Ciudad Juárez maquiladoras until 1983 (Brannon & Lucker, 1989: Table 1, p. 41, 42). Following the economic crisis and peso devaluation of 1982 and the economic restructuring which followed, the maquila labor force became increasingly more heterogeneous: older, married women and female heads of household entered all types of maquiladora plants in greater numbers (Tiano, 1990) as did increasing number of men (MacLachlan & Aguilar, 1998, p. 321). The trend has continued through the economic crisis of 1994. The proportion of men employed in the maquiladoras as workers (obreros)2 has increased from 21.7 percent in 1975 to 40.9 percent in 1995. By 1998, men constituted 43.4 percent of the maquila labor force (INEGI, 1999: 8). Several explanations have been offered for the increasing heterogeneity and masculinization of the maquiladora labor force. First, it has been argued that, following the explosive growth on maquiladora plants in the 1980s, there were simply not enough “maquila grade” females to fill the jobs being offered (Tiano, 1994; Brannon & Lucker, 1989). Thus, less “qualified” female labor (older, partnered or unpartnered women with dependent children) and male labor have been accessed. Second, because of a proliferation of plants engaged in what traditionally have
1 The Mexican state, however, also encouraged the Border Industrialization Program for other reasons: first, as a means to underwrite economic development along the economically depressed border; second, as a means to earn foreign exchange; and third, to curry favor among the “local comprador bourgeoisie” allied or wishing to ally with foreign capital (Sklair, 1993). Alleviating male unemployment was only one of several aims. When the maquiladora managers showed a preference for female labor, little was done to discourage them, as the Border Industrialization Program nevertheless was envisioned as meeting the other goals. This is in stark contrast to the Irish case, where, in order to maintain the traditional family roles of husband as breadwinner and wife as his dependent, ideas incorporated in the Irish constitution, the Industrial Development Authority of Ireland specified that at least 75 percent of the export-processing jobs be reserved for men (Pyle, 1990a; see also Pyle, 1990b). In Mexico, however, maquiladora management does try to screen out pregnant women; a pregnancy text is required before a woman is contracted. This is due to the reluctance of maquiladora management to pay the legislated 3 months leave of absence with pay due to women after giving birth (Compa, 1999: 14–15). This practice has been held to be contrary to the provisions of the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), the labor agreement included in NAFTA negotiations, and is presently under negotiation. 2 I will be using worker (obrero) throughout in the same sense used by INEGI, the National Institute of Statistics in Mexico, viz., all those employed by the maquiladoras who are neither technicians nor managers/administrators. It has been pointed out that some male workers may be involved in warehousing and distribution activities rather than detailed line work, and thus not be production/assembly workers. Furthermore, there may be a higher proportion of male production workers on night shifts and women on day shifts. I thank Rebecca Hovey for these insights. Unfortunately, given the data available, it is difficult to determine if these patterns are at work in masculinizing the maquiladora labor force.
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been stereotyped as “masculine” jobs, more men are being employed in higher proportions in certain kinds of jobs than women (Wilson, 1993). As a variation on this theme, it has been argued that increasingly high-tech jobs are occupied by men who are expected to have higher “mechanical” skills than women (Alegr´ıa & Coubés, 1997). Nash (1983) points out that in the beginning stages of industrialization, the most vulnerable workers, usually women, are employed. This was true historically in the now industrialized countries as it is in the contemporary industrializing countries. However, as industries become more capital intensive, more men are employed, despite women being capable of doing the work. One must ask: why do men begin to replace women, especially in those cases where male-controlled unions are not strong? Third, it has been suggested that the work force in general has come to know of the characteristics of workers preferred by maquiladora managers, so that a labor force of “docile, nimble-fingered” men have begun to present themselves for work in the maquiladora plants (Sklair, 1993).
2. The masculinization of the maquiladoras Whereas between 1975 and 1995, the number of maquiladora workers (obreros) increased 9.2 times, from 57,850 to 531,729, in the same period male workers increased 17.3 times, from 12,570 in 1975 to 217,557 in 1995. In 1998, 355,022 men worked in productive jobs in the maquiladoras. As can be seen in Table 1, the proportion of male workers comprised about 22 percent of the maquiladora labor force between 1975 and 1982. By 1984, 2 years after the crisis, they comprised 29.1 percent of the maquila labor force (excluding technicians and managers/administrators), by 1990; 39.1 percent, and by 1998; 4 years after the peso devaluation of 1994, 43.4 percent. By 2000 men comprised 44.8 percent of the maquiladora workers. The proliferation of maquiladoras is documented in Table 2; from 620 plants in 1980, employing an average of 193 workers, maquiladora plants increased to 3,590 in 2000, employing an average of 358 workers. Many of the smaller maquiladoras went out of business due to economic crises; 29 disappeared from view in 1994. However, Fortune 500 companies, some of which employ as many as 2,000 workers, thrived (Sklair, 1993). Notably, some smaller maquiladoras returned after 1996, when the average number of workers per plant reached 312. The masculinization illustrated in Table 1 is apparent in the fact that whereas the total maquiladora labor force increased by 504.9 percent between 1980 and 1996, the female component increased by only 354.0 percent and the male component by 1,018.9 percent. Nonetheless, maquiladoras, at least in Baja California, employ a higher proportion of the female labor force than of the male labor force. In that state maquiladoras employed 1 percent of the male labor force in 1970, 2 percent in 1980, and 10 percent in 1990. Maquiladoras accounted for 27 percent of women’s employment in Baja California in 1990 (Tiano, 1990: 67).
3. The lack of “maquila grade” female labor Arguments concerning the lack of “maquila grade” females as a reason for hiring more mature women and for hiring men take two forms. One stresses demographic reasons: the
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Table 1 Proportions of male and female workers (obreros) in the maquiladoras (nation-wide) Year
Total
Total male
Total female
Male (%)
Female (%)
1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
57850 64670 68187 78570 95818 102020 110684 105383 125278 165505 173874 203894 248638 391379 349602 360358 374827 406879 440683 477032 531729 616617 731471 823561 921623 1040077
12575 13686 14999 18205 21981 23140 24993 23990 32004 48215 53832 64812 84535 110927 135081 140919 148900 161271 178512 192991 217557 257575 309774 357905 406459 466004
45275 50985 53188 60365 78837 78880 85691 81393 93274 117290 120042 139082 164103 190452 214521 219439 225927 245608 262171 284041 314172 359042 421697 465656 515164 574073
21.7 21.2 22.0 23.2 23.0 22.7 22.6 22.8 25.2 29.1 31.0 31.8 34.0 36.8 38.6 39.1 39.7 39.6 40.5 40.5 40.9 41.7 42.3 43.5 44.1 44.8
78.3 78.8 78.0 76.8 77.0 77.3 77.4 77.2 74.5 70.9 69.0 68.2 66.0 63.2 61.4 60.9 60.3 60.4 59.5 59.5 59.1 58.2 57.7 56.5 55.9 55.2
Sources: Brannon & Lucker, 1989: Table 1, p. 41; INEGI, 1996: 8; INEGI, 1997: 13–17; INEGI, 1999: 8; INEGI, 2001: 8.
rapid expansion of maquiladoras in the 1980s simply used up all available young, single, secondary school educated female labor. Maquiladora plants were thus forced to look to other sectors of the population, including unemployed men and women located in the interior of Mexico, to fulfill their labor force needs (Brannon & Lucker, 1989). The decentralization of the maquiladoras, their gradual expansion into the interior of Mexico where unemployment is higher and minimum wages lower, is shown by the fact that in 1980, 89.1 percent of maquiladoras were located in border cities, but by 1996 only 81.1 percent were (INEGI, 1996: 8). Notably, Mexico is divided into a number of wage zones, with the minimum wage being lower in the interior than along the border (see Sklair (1993) for a discussion of these wage zones). A second argument explaining the lack of adequate maquila grade female labor examines the inadequacy of the minimum wage. Although the minimum wage is unerringly paid in the maquiladoras, it is not simply a wage floor, but also a wage ceiling, which, it is speculated, maquiladora owners and managers have informally agreed not to surpass (Sklair, 1993: 178–79; Tiano, 1990: 148–149, 152; Brannon & Lucker, 1989: 66, footnote 2). Determined to keep
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Table 2 Number of maquiladoras and average work force (technicians and management/administrators included) Year
Maquiladoras (all Mexico)
Maquiladora personnel employed (all)
Average personnel per maquiladora
1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
620 605 585 600 672 760 890 1125 1396 1655 1703 1914 2075 2114 2085 2130 2411 2717 2983 3297 3590
119546 130973 127048 150867 199684 211968 249833 305253 369489 429725 446436 467352 505698 542074 583044 648263 753708 731471 817877 1140528 1285007
192.8 216.5 217.1 251.4 297.1 278.9 280.7 271.3 264.7 259.7 262.1 244.2 243.7 256.4 279.6 304.3 312.6 269.2 274.2 345.9 357.9
Sources: INEGI, 1996: 2, 8; INEGI, 1997: 4; INEGI, 1999: 2, 8; INEGI, 2001: 2, 8.
their wage bill to a minimum, the maquiladoras have been forced to hire the most vulnerable of laborers, laborers who do not display the ideal characteristics of the original maquiladora labor force. Evidence exists that as many as one-third of the “maquila grade” female workers previously employed by maquiladoras have left the industry to work in the expanding, and also feminized, service sector where wages are often higher, work autonomy greater, and where, unlike in the maquiladora industry, job ladders exist (Tiano, 1990: 160, 162). However, it must be noted that maquiladoras continue to be an important, and increasingly important, source of employment for women. Despite the fact that more men are employed in the maquiladoras, there have also been astounding increases in the absolute numbers of women production workers. Whereas in 1980, 78,800 women were employed in the maquiladoras, this number had increased to 219,438 in 1990, and more than doubled again to 574,073 by 2000 (INEGI, 2001: 8).
4. Gender stratification of the maquiladora work force It has been suggested that the increasing diversity in the kinds of maquildoras located in Mexico, especially with the introduction of high-tech industries, has spawned more jobs stereotyped as “masculine” (Tiano, 1990: 229). This is closely related to the idea that some kinds of
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manufacturing/assembly jobs are stereotyped as “masculine” and others as “feminine” whether in the First World or in the Third World (Elson & Pearson, 1981: 92; Nash & Fernández-Kelly, 1983; Sklair, 1993: 171). It has been argued, for example, in a study of the maquila industry in Nogales, Sonora, that there is a male/female segmentation of the work force into high and low skilled jobs within individual maquiladoras (Kopinak, 1995). It is also maintained that more men are employed in the increasing numbers of Fordist manufacturing for re-export plants (Wilson, 1993). A study conducted in the manufacturing industry (including maquiladora assembly plants) in 11 Mexican states, however, led to the conclusion that high-tech industries are the most feminized (Alegr´ıa & Coubés, 1997: 33). On the other hand, distinguishing between labor intensive assembly plants and Fordist and post-Fordist manufacturing maquiladoras, Wilson (1993: 151) in a study of 71 maquiladoras found the most intense concentration of male production workers in the rapidly proliferating Fordist manufacturing plants, where they make up 49 percent of the labor force. In 1989 in the post-Fordist plants, 66 percent of the labor force was female; women make up 63 percent of the work force in the labor intensive assembly plants (the traditional maquiladora plant type), and only 51 percent in the Fordist manufacturing plants (Wilson, 1993: Table 9.2, p. 147). That there are differences in the proportions of male and female workers according to plant type can be seen in Table 3. Whereas less than 35 percent of the textile and apparel workers were men prior to the 1994 peso crisis, more than 72 percent of the line operators in furniture and fixture manufacturing was male. Yet noticeable also are the increasing proportions of men in the years between 1982 and 1996 in maquilas where women traditionally made up the vast majority of the line operators. Thus, men’s involvement in the textile and apparel industry increased from 16.3 percent in 1982 to 37.8 percent in 1996; and their involvement in electrical and electronics assembly increased from 19.3 percent in 1982 to 37.3 percent in 1996. Conversely, women have increased their presence in furniture and fixture assembly from 18.9 percent in 1982 to 27.4 percent in 1996. Between 1991 and 1996, the
Table 3 Changes in proportions of the maquiladora workers (excluding technicians and managers) by maquiladora type, 1982–96 Maquiladora type
1982
1986
1991
1993
1996
33.7 34.7 54.3 72.6
33.5 35.2 54.5 72.3
37.8 37.3 54.0 72.6
Percentage of women workers (obreros) employed by maquiladora type Textiles and apparel 83.7 76.4 66.3 Electrical and electronics 80.7 73.7 65.3 Motor vehicles and accessories 64.2 53.3 45.7 Furniture and fixtures 18.9 24.8 27.4
66.5 64.8 45.5 27.7
62.2 62.7 46.0 27.4
Percentage of men workers (obreros) employed by maquiladora type Textiles and apparel 16.3 23.6 Electrical and electronics 19.3 26.3 Motor vehicles and accessories 35.8 46.7 Furniture and fixtures 81.1 75.2
Source: Brannon & Lucker, 1989: Table 4, p. 51; INEGI, 1997: Table 3.2, pp. 45–50.
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number of women employed in motor vehicles and accessory manufacturing increased by 14,116, while the number of men increased by 16,130 (INEGI, 1997: 45–50). A little over 2000 more men than women were hired in these 5 years, showing the masculine bias of the industry, but not by much. Men did increase their presence, however, as they were less than half of the labor force in motor vehicles and accessories in 1982 (35.8 percent), but constituted more than half of the labor force by 1991 (54.3 percent), an advantage which they have maintained. Notably, the Mexican National Institute charged with gathering statistics, Instituto Nacional de Estádistica, Geograf´ıa e Informática (INEGI), uses the term maquiladora to refer to plants involved in “partial manufacturing, assembly, or packaging, realized by any business which is not the original manufacturer” (INEGI, 1997: vii, translation mine; see also Warner, 1993: 183). Maquiladoras, strictly speaking, were not involved in the complete manufacture of items, were usually financed with foreign capital, and were taxed only on the value added by the labor force once the items were re-exported to the United States. Whereas Fordist and post-Fordist methods may be utilized in these partial manufacturing, assembly, and packaging processes (Wilson, 1993: 135–136), as will be highlighted below many multinational companies have established subsidiaries in Mexico involving the complete manufacture of a product (Brannon & James, 1994). These too may be divided into those using Fordist (relatively masculinized) and post-Fordist (substantially feminized) manufacturing processes.
5. The creation of “docile, nimble-fingered” men The growing heterogeneity of the maquiladora labor force may be linked to persistent economic crises, repeated peso devaluations, falling real wages, and rampant inflation throughout Mexico.3 A number of scholars have noted that households reacted to the economic crisis of 1982 by sending more teenage sons and daughters as well as children under 15, all of whom would otherwise have been studying, into the labor market; married women also increased their presence in the labor force (Bener´ıa, 1991: 172; 1992: 92; González de la Rocha, 1988: 214; 1991: 117–119; 1994; Roberts, 1991). As Peña (1997: 57) points out, “Typically families have to put several members into the maquila labor market because one worker’s earnings are simply insufficient to support an individual, let alone an entire family.” By forcing families to send their adolescents into the labor force, though maintaining wages too low to provide a minimum wage, the maquiladoras “create” new categories of workers to labor in their plants (Anderson & de la Rosa, 1989; Anderson, 1990). In interior cities such as Guadalajara, where fewer formal sector maquiladora plants exist than on the border, many of these new entrants gained income in informal sector activities; they also represent a potential reserve labor force
3 As Peña (1997: 57) notes: “Real wages (adjusted for inflation) in the maquiladoras declined from $6.37 per day in 1982 to $3.72 in 1980 . . . This put real wages in the maquilas at a rate that is lower than the 1967 average of $3.80 per day.” This wage was cut to less than half in dollar terms after the peso devaluation of 1994. Prior to the crisis $1 was exchangeable for 3.2 pesos; by 1995 the value of a dollar superseded 8 pesos; and presently (1999) almost 10. Minimum wages are reckoned in pesos, but paid by the maquiladoras by exchanging dollars.
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for maquiladoras located on the border and elsewhere in Mexico.4 The sending of increasing numbers of family members into the labor force has also occurred after the most recent crisis, in 1994. As many Mexican-owned businesses were bankrupted by the peso crises, and as the maquiladoras—seduced by the promise of even lower wage bills—proliferated, unemployed or underemployed Mexican male heads of household and their young, single, and recently married sons, sought work in the maquiladora plants. Sklair (1993: 171–172) has pointed out, “From various countries and over various ‘feminized’ occupations in the assembly industries has come a litany of docile, undemanding ‘nimble-fingered’ women workers uninterested in joining unions or standing up for their rights.”5 Opposed to this litany was an image of aggressive, demanding, militant men. However, “Once the image of the ‘ideal’ maquila worker is institutionalized and accepted by the working class along the border, the need to employ women in preference to men diminishes, and job opportunities for docile, undemanding, and nimble-fingered, nonunion, and nonmilitant men open up” (Sklair, 1993: 173; see also McClenaghan on the Dominican Republic, McClenaghan, 1997: 24). Given the increasing inadequacy of the going minimum wage to sustain a worker, especially in the face of repeated peso devaluations and runaway inflation, one must ask what has converted males into a docile, nimble-fingered, nonmilitant labor force. Partially, it seems due to the decline of other employment opportunities for males, bankruptcies of Mexican-owned businesses caused by the fall of the peso and burgeoning interest rates, privatization of land in the countryside under constitutional changes fostered by Salinas de Gortari, and an over-saturated informal sector in urban centers.6 In some traditional male sectors, such as construction work, competition for jobs is so great that in some states the weekly salary has barely risen since the last peso devaluation, despite the fact that the peso has less than 40 percent of its pre-1994 buying power. Partially, as well, interest in maquiladora employment is due to the draw of side benefits provided with the job, such as access to the Mexican Social Security System (Fernández-Kelly, 1983: 107; Tiano, 1990: 157–158), for the worker and his spouse and dependent children, or, if single, his siblings under the age of 18. Notably, women’s maquiladora employment also permits her to provide insurance for the family’s dependent minors.
4
Notably, as Brannon & Lucker (1989: 65) point out: “As labor markets tightened in major maquiladora centers on the border, the number of firms in non-border cities increased. In the period 1983–1987, the number of maquiladoras increased from 71 to 120 and employment grew more rapidly in the interior than it did on the border. Firms were attracted by lower wages and more favorable labor market conditions,” i.e. higher rates of unemployment. By the end of 1996 more than 10,000 workers in the state of Jalisco, where Guadalajara is located, were employed by 64 export-oriented maquiladoras (INEGI, 1996: 3; INEGI, 1997: 18). 5 Nonetheless, women have challenged this image of the docile worker by their shop-floor resistances, including slow-downs, and by their strike activities (see, for example, Baird and McCaughan, 1975; Peña, 1991, 1997; Young, 1991; Sklair, 1993: 57–58). 6 As a case in point, it has been estimated that the population of street vendors has increased 400 percent in the past 10 years in Mexican metropolitan centers (Rivera, 1998).
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6. Regional differences There has been an increase in the number of maquiladoras located in the interior states; employing 7.8 percent of the maquiladora workers in 1991, they employed 14.4 percent of that labor force in 1996 (Table 4). Notably, maquiladoras in the interior state resemble early maquiladoras on the border, with their higher female participation as line workers (Table 4). Although the statistics available do not permit easy interpretation of labor force differences between border cities and interior cities within border states, greater increases in interior maquiladoras are found if border cities are contrasted with all interior cities. For example, in the state of Chihuaha, Ciudad Juárez is a border city, but Chihuaha is an interior city: both have maquiladoras, although in 1996 Ciudad Juárez’s maquiladoras employed more than five times as many maquiladora personnel than Chihuaha (INEGI, 1997: Table 2.2, p. 24) and continued to employ almost five times as many in 2000 (INEGI, 2001: 60). Nonetheless, non-border maquiladoras, including those located within border states, rose from almost 20 percent in 1988 to 27 percent in 1992 and to 32.9 percent by mid-1998 (Sklair, 1993: 244; Table 7.2: 144; SECOFI, 1998: 28). There is thus an increasing probability for maquiladoras to locate in non-border cities. In the border states the proportion of male production workers in the maquiladoras was 41.2 percent in 1991 and 43.2 percent in 1996, showing a slight increase in the male/female ratio in the maquiladoras after the signing of NAFTA in early 1994 and the devaluation of the peso in late 1994. In the interior states, the mean male line worker participation rate was 27.4 percent in 1991 and 31 percent in 1996. Only Puebla’s maquiladora labor force had roughly the same proportion of males (42.6 percent) as the border states in 1996. On the other hand, in the border states of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas, male workers were proportionately fewer than in other border states. Notably, in Jalisco, 78.2 percent of the maquiladora line operatives were women. The high rates of female participation rates in the interior states is noteworthy, however, due to the fact that neo-patriarchal values, such as the stress on the role of the male breadwinner and keeping wives at home, are stronger in many interior states than along the border (Wilson, 1998). Several of the interior states, especially Jalisco, Durango, and Guanajuato, are states of high recurrent immigration of males seeking work in the United States (Jones, 1995: 10–11). Wives left behind by husbands and sons often seek wage work for themselves and/or their daughters when faced by irregular or inadequate remittances, thereby subverting the gender order (Mummert, 1994; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994). This fact partially explains the availability of women for employment in those internal states with high levels of male migration to the United States. The maquiladora managers’ preference for female labor has also been recreated in the interior states. Nonetheless, despite the maquiladora managers having shown preference for female labor in the interior, once having adopted the prevailing standard of the “ideal” worker, non-migrant or returning migrant men, pinched by economic crisis in Mexico and the repercussions of employer sanctions in the United States, seem to be seeking work in the interior maquiladoras to a greater extent. As other researchers have noted, economic crisis and the low minimum wages maintained by Mexico’s federal government, necessitating several workers per household, are forcing women into the labor market (González de la Rocha,
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1988, 1991; Kopinak, 1995) at the same time that men are seeking jobs previously typed as “feminized.” Thus, economic crisis conditions provide another explanation of women’s entry into the maquiladora labor force in the interior, as well as men’s.
7. Speculations of the effects of NAFTA NAFTA’s effects on the maquiladora industry are still subject to speculation since several of the NAFTA provisions do not go into effect until 2001. Up to 100 percent of maquiladora production will be permitted to be sold in the domestic market by that year; currently only 50 percent of maquiladora production can be sold in Mexico. By 2001 maquiladoras will have no economic advantage over any other type of foreign or domestically financed factory (Brannon & James, 1994: 5–7). Several decrees issued by the Mexican government have already affected the maquiladora sector. Whereas in earlier years only maquiladoras benefited from tariff exemptions on their inputs, between 1983 and 1987 the Mexican government exempted more than 8,000 items previously subject to import taxes from these tariffs; Mexico also reduced maximum tariff levels from 100 to 20 percent during the same period (Brannon & James, 1994: 2). In 1989, a governmental decree permitted 100 percent foreign ownership for investments previously restrained by a demand for 51 percent Mexican ownership. The decree also encourages maquiladoras “to make the transition from simple product assembly for export to more substantial manufacturing for the domestic market (Sklair, 1993: 241). Fordist (relatively masculinized with 49 percent of the work force being male) and post-Fordist (substantially feminized with over 65 percent of the work force being female) manufacturing plants are involved in this “more substantial” production (Wilson, 1993: Table 9.2, p. 147). Notably, many of the multinational manufacturing plants are located in the interior states: “IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Wang have plants in the interior of Mexico producing for both the domestic and export markets. Ford has invested almost $1 billion in a plant in Hermosillo [an interior city in the border state of Sonora] that turns out Mercury Tracers; Nissan Mexico is investing that amount in an automobile plant in Aquascalientes; and Puebla boasts the only Volkswagen production in North America (Business Week 1990)” (Brannon & James, 1994: 7–8). There are several questions regarding how NAFTA will affect the gender composition of the maquiladora/manufacturing labor force. Will the border location continue to be favored, or will more and more plants locate in the interior? Will women’s proportion of the labor force in the interior of the country continue to remain higher than average, or will men gradually make inroads as they have done in the border cities? Will there be a shift from labor intensive assembly to greater numbers of Fordist and post-Fordist manufacturing plants? Will the growing number of manufacturing plants be segmented by gender, with Fordist plants continuing to employ relatively more men than other types of plants and post-Fordist plants employing primarily women? Some scholars argue that more plants, assembly and manufacturing (partial or complete), will be established in the interior due to ample supplies of female laborers, lower wages yet greater stability of the labor force, and closer access to the domestic market (Brannon & James, 1994: 7–8). Others argue that U.S. owned or controlled plants will continue to cluster at the
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border due to easier access to inputs and materials from the United States, the ability of higher management to live in the United States and commute to work, and the easy access to the U.S. market (Picou & Peluchon, 1995: 78–80; Sklair, 1993: 244, 262). Evidence provided above suggests that more and more plants are locating in the interior, although almost 70 percent remain on the border. Writing in the early 1990s, Wilson (1993: 152) found that “the most rapidly growing segments of the maquiladora industry are the Fordist manufacturers—especially in the interior— and the labor intensive assembly plants, especially along the border.” Since Fordist plants are becoming typed as “masculine,” more men can be expected to present themselves for work in these enterprises. As macroeconomic crisis translates into the crisis of the household economy, more men can also be expected to present themselves for labor-intensive assembly work, which they have consistently done over the last decade and a half. One impact that NAFTA will have on the country-wide will foment an expanding labor force, both male and female, for employment of all types. Cheap, imported corn is expected to throw into bankruptcy small farmers who, with constitutional changes effected under President Salinas de Gortari (1988–94), can mortgage or sell land previously protected from alienation by collective ownership (Foley, 1995). Rural exodus to the cities is an expected result, with family members thus becoming a reserve army of labor for the manufacturing and assembly plants. Embattled by economic crises, an unstable peso, and inflation, more docile, nimble-fingered men will be found waiting outside the factory gates.7
8. Conclusions Without intensive survey research the reasons why increasing numbers of men entering the maquiladoras can only be surmised. At least four forces seem to be at work, however. First, despite the fact maquila grade (relatively educated) female laborers are often finding alternative employment that suits them better, massive increases in the female maquiladora labor force are apparent. Increasing numbers of plants have led to the employment of 462,855 women production workers, which is 243,416 more women than in 1990. While relatively higher proportions of men are being employed, in absolute numbers both more men and more women have been employed each year since the establishment of the maquiladora program. Second, young men who might otherwise be studying are joining their sisters and entering the maquila labor force as part of the household sustenance strategies under conditions of economic crisis. Third, traditionally “masculine” types of work are being offered by the maquiladoras, using Fordist manufacturing processes and employing higher proportions of men than the traditional labor-intensive assembly plants or post-Fordist manufacturing plants (Wilson, 1993). These
7 In late 2001 and early 2002 newspapers in Mexico and the United States reported a decline in the number of maquiladoras along the U.S.-Mexican border. It is speculated that the companies moved to Central America and/or China where wage rates are even lower than in Mexico’s interior and southern states. Over 200,000 employees of maquiladoras in Mexico were laid off in the past year or so. What this portends for the composition of the maquiladora labor force is still to be seen. I would like to thank Hazel Dayton Gunn for forwarding me the New York Times, December 26, 2001 article on the decline of the maquiladoras.
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partial manufacturing plants as well as complete manufacturing plants will most probably increase as NAFTA provisions go into effect; so too will the available work force, both male and female. Finally, and most importantly, due to recurrent economic crises linked to successive peso devaluations, economic restructuring, high male underemployment and unemployment, the precipitous fall in real wages, and persistent inflation, male workers are becoming docile, nimble-fingered, and non-militant, thus bearing the traits of the ideal maquiladora labor force. Acknowledgments I would like to thank David Barkin, Rebecca Hovey, and Laurie Nisonoff for their careful editing and suggestions which helped to make the article better. The responsibility for the final product, of course, rests with me. References Alegr´ıa, T., & Coubés, M. L. (1997). Determinates de la concentración del empleo feminino: diferencias regionales y sectoriales en el norte de Mexico. In Proceedings of the paper presented at the Latin American studies association conference. Guadalajara, Mexico. Anderson, J. B. (1990). Maquiladoras and border industrialisation: impact on economic development in Mexico. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 5(1), 5–9. Anderson, J. B., & de la Rosa, M. (1989). Estrateg´ıas de sobreviviencia entre las familias pobres de la frontera. Memorias de fronteras Iberoamericanos ayer y hoy. Tijuana: Instituto Historico, UNAM-UABC. Baird, P., & McCaughan, E. (1975). Hit and run: U.S. runaway shops on the Mexican border. In Proceedings of the North American congress on Latin America. NACLA Report, July–August. Bener´ıa, L. (1991). Structural adjustment, the labour market and the household: the case of Mexico. In G. Standing, & V. Tokman (Eds.), Toward social adjustment: labour market issues in structural adjustment (pp. 161–183). Geneva: International Labour Office. Bener´ıa, L. (1992). The Mexican debt crisis: restructuring the economy and the household. In L. Bener´ıa, & S. Feldman (Eds.), Unequal burden: economic crises, persistent poverty and women’s work. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Brannon, J. T., & James, D. D. (1994). Cometh the NAFTA, whither the maquiladora? Reflections on the future of industrialization in northern Mexico. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 9(2), 1–22. Brannon, J. T., & Lucker, G. W. (1989). The impact of Mexico’s economic crisis on the demographic composition of the maquiladora labor force. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 4(1), 39–70. Compa, L. (1999). International labor rights and NAFTA’s labor side agreement. LASA Forum, 30(2), 14–17. Elson, D., & Pearson, R. (1981). Nimble fingers make cheap workers: an analysis of women’s employment in third world export manufacturing. Feminist Review, Spring, 87–107. Fernández-Kelly, M. P. (1983). For we are sold, I and my people: women and industry in Mexico’s frontier. Albany: State University of New York Press. Foley, M. W. (1995). Privatizing the countryside: the Mexican peasant movement and neoliberal reform. Latin American Perspectives, 22(1), 59–76. González de la Rocha, M. (1988). Economic crisis, domestic reorganisation and women’s work in Guadalajara, Mexico. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 7(2), 207–223. González de la Rocha, M. (1991). Family well-being, food consumption, and survival strategies during Mexico’s economic crisis. In M. González de la Rocha, & A. E. Latap´ı (Eds.), Social responses to Mexico’s economic crisis of the 1980s (pp. 115–128). San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California. González de la Rocha, M. (1994). The resources of poverty: women and survival in a Mexican city. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
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Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. (1994). Gendered transitions: Mexican experiences of immigration. Berkeley: University of California Press. INEGI (1996). Industr´ıa maquiladora de exportación. Aguascalientes, Aquascalientes: Instituto Nacional de Estádistica, Geograf´ıa e Informatica. INEGI (1997). Estadistica de la industria maquiladora de exportac´ıon. Aguascalientes, Aquascalientes: Instituto Nacional de Estádistica, Geograf´ıa e Informatica. INEGI (1999). Industria maquiladora de exportac´ıon. Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes: Instituto Nacional de Estádistica, Geograf´ıa e Informatica. INEGI (2001). Industria maquiladora de exportac´ıon. Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes: Instituto Nacional de Estádistica, Geograf´ıa e Informatica. Jones, R. C. (1995). Ambivalent journey: U.S. migration and economic mobility in north–central Mexico. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. Kopinak, K. (1995). Gender as a vehicle for subordination of women maquiladora workers in Mexico. Latin American Perspectives, 22(1), 30–48. MacLachlan, I., & Aguilar, A. G. (1998). Maquiladora myths: locational and structural change in Mexico’s export manufacturing industry. The Professional Geographer, 50(3), 315–330. McClenaghan, S. (1997). Women, work, and empowerment: romanticizing the reality. In E. Dore (Ed.), Gender politics in Latin America: debates in theory and practice (pp. 19–35). New York: Monthly Review Press. Mummert, G. (1994). From metate to despate: rural Mexican women’s salaried labor and the redefinition of gendered spaces and roles. In J. Fowler-Salamini, & M. K. Vaughn (Eds.), Women of the Mexican countryside, 1850–1990, 192–209. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. Nash, J. (1983). The impact of the changing international division of labor on different sectors of the labor force. In J. Nash, & M. P. Fernández-Kelly (Eds.), Women, men and the international division of labor (pp. 3–38). Albany: State University of New York. Nash, J., & Fernández-Kelly, M. P. (1983). Women, men and the international division of labor. Albany: State University of New York Press. Peña, D. (1991). Tortuosidad: shop floor struggles of female maquiladora workers. In V. L. Ru´ız, & S. Tiano (Eds.), Women on the U.S.-Mexico border (pp. 129–154). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Peña, D. G. (1997). The terror of the machine: technology, work, gender & ecology on the U.S.-Mexico border. Austin, TX: Center for Mexican American Studies. Picou, A., & Peluchon, E. (1995). The Texas–Mexico maquila industry: expectations for the future. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 10(2), 75–86. Pyle, J. L. (1990a). Export-led development and the underemployment of women: the impact of discriminatory development policy in the republic of Ireland. In K. Ward (Ed.), Women workers and global restructuring (pp. 85–112). Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, Cornell University. Pyle, J. L. (1990b). Female employment and export-led development in Ireland: labour market impact of state-reinforced gender inequality in the household. In S. Strichter, & J. L. Parpart (Eds.), Women, employment and the family in the international division of labor. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Rivera, A. (1998). Creció 4000 percent el ambulantaje en municipios metropolitanos. El Nacional, August 12, 27 (Mexico, DF). Roberts, B. (1991). The changing nature of informal employment: the case of Mexico. In G. G. Standing, & V. Tokman (Eds.), Toward social adjustment: labour market issues in structural adjustment (pp. 115–140). Geneva: International Labour Office. SECOFI (Secretar´ıa de Comercio y Fomento Industrial) (1998). Informe de SECOFI: invirtió mil 100 mmd la industr´ıa maquiladora. El Nacional, September 15 (Mexico, DF). Standing, G. (1989). Global feminization through flexible labor. World Development, 17(7), 1077–1095. Sklair, L. (1993). Assembling for development: the maquila industry in Mexico and the United States (2nd ed.). San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California. Tiano, S. (1990). Maquiladora women: a new category of workers? In K. Ward (Ed.), Women workers and global restructuring. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, Cornell University. Tiano, S. (1994). Patriarchy on the line: labor, gender and ideology in the Mexican maquila industry. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
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Warner, J. A. (1993). The sociological impact of the maquiladoras. In K. Fatemi (Ed.), The maquiladora industry: economic solution or problem? (pp. 183–198). New York: Praeger. Wilson, P. A. (1993). The new maquiladoras: flexible production in low-wage regions. In K. Fatemi (Ed.), The maquiladora industry: economic solution or problem? (pp. 135–158). New York: Praeger. Wilson, T. D. (1998). Micro-, meso-, and macropatterns of women’s migration to Colonia Popular, Mexicali, Baja California. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 8(2), 63–82. Young, G. (1991). Gender-identification and working class solidarity among maquila workers in Ciudad Juárez. In V. L. Ru´ız, & S. Tiano (Eds.), Women on the U.S.-Mexico border (pp. 105–128). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.