The emergence of global assembly plants is closely linked to the creation of a global female industrial labor force. Women and Work in Mexico's Maquiladoras examines this larger process in Mexico, where--despite a century of industrialization and a tradition of well-paid, highly organized, male workers--the maquiladora factories have turned to predominantly female labor. Exploring this dramatic shift, this book convincingly demonstrates how gender restructuring in workplaces and households has become a crucial element in the reorientation of Mexican development. The author compares Mexico's new industrial system with its historical antecedent and documents federal policy changes that have resulted in distinct patterns of gender, unionization, household form, and social welfare. Rich in ethnographic detail, the book uses the voices of workers themselves to provide an intimate look at how daily lives have been transformed--in ways that could not have been foreseen--by the national and international processes shaping the country's industrial transition.

Published originally as La flor mas bella de la maquiladora, this beautifully written book is based on interviews the author conducted with more than fifty Mexican women who work in the assembly plants along the U.S.-Mexico border. A descriptive analytic study conducted in the late 1970s, the book uses compelling testimonials to detail the struggles these women face. The experiences of women in maquiladoras are attracting increasing attention from scholars, especially in the context of ongoing Mexican migration to the country's northern frontier and in light of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This book is among the earliest accounts of the physical and psychological toll exacted from the women who labor in these plants. Iglesias Prieto captures the idioms of these working women so that they emerge as dynamic individuals, young and articulate personalities, inexorably engaged in the daily struggle to change the fundamental conditions of their exploitation.

In this engrossing and original book, Leslie Salzinger takes us with her into the gendered world of Mexico's global factories. Her careful ethnographic work, personal voice, and sophisticated analysis capture the feel of life inside the maquiladoras and make a compelling case that transnational production is a gendered process. The research grounds contemporary feminist theory in an examination of daily practices and provides an important new perspective on globalization.

On the basis of systematic research and personal experience, For We Are Sold, I and My People uncovers some of the social costs of modern production. Maria Patricia Fernandez-Kelly peels off the labels--"Made in Taiwan," "Assembled in Mexico"--and the trade names--RCA, Sony, General Motors, United Technologies, General Electric, Mattel, Chrysler, American Hospital Supply--to reveal the hidden human dimensions of present-day multinational manufacturing procedures. Focusing on Cuidad Juarez, located at the United States-Mexican border, Fernandez-Kelly examines the reality of maquiladoras, the hundreds of assembly plants that since the 1960s have been used by the Mexican government as part of its development strategy. Most maquiladoras function as subsidiaries of large U.S.-based corporations and a majority of the employees are women. Drawing from current knowledge in political economy and anthropology, this study focuses on one common denominator of the international division of labor--a growing proletariat of Third World women exploited by what some experts are calling "the global assembly line."

Prior to the millennium, economists and policy makers argued that free trade between the United States and Mexico would benefit both Americans and Mexicans. They believed that NAFTA would be a “win-win” proposition that would offer U.S. companies new markets for their products and Mexicans the hope of living in a more developed country with the modern conveniences of wealthier nations. Blending rigorous economic and statistical analysis with concern for the people affected, Mexican Women in American Factories offers the first assessment of whether NAFTA has fulfilled these expectations by examining its socioeconomic impact on workers in a Mexican border town. Carolyn Tuttle led a group that interviewed 620 women maquila workers in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. The responses from this representative sample refute many of the hopeful predictions made by scholars before NAFTA and reveal instead that little has improved for maquila workers. The women’s stories make it plain that free trade has created more low-paying jobs in sweatshops where workers are exploited. Families of maquila workers live in one- or two-room houses with no running water, no drainage, and no heat. The multinational companies who operate the maquilas consistently break Mexican labor laws by requiring women to work more than nine hours a day, six days a week, without medical benefits, while the minimum wage they pay workers is insufficient to feed their families. These findings will make a crucial contribution to debates over free trade, CAFTA-DR, and the impact of globalization.

The opening of free trade agreements in the 1980s caused major economic changes in Mexico and the United States. These economic activities spawned dramatic social changes in Mexican society. One young Mexican woman, Anay Palomeque de Carrillo, rode the tumultuous wave of these economic activities from her rural home in tropical southern Mexico to the factories in the harsh desert lands of Ciudad Juárez during the early years of the city’s notorious violence. During her years as an education professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, author Elaine Hampton researched Mexican education in border factory (maquiladora) communities. On one trip across the border into Ciudad Juárez, she met Anay, who became her guide in uncovering the complexities of a factory laborer’s experiences in these turbulent times. Hampton here provides an exploration of education in an era of dramatic social and economic upheaval in rural and urban Mexico. This critical ethnographic case study presents Anay’s experiences in a series of narrative essays addressing the economic, social, and political context of her world. This young Mexican woman leads us through Ciudad Juárez in its most violent years, into women’s experiences in the factories, around family and religious commitments as well as personal illness, and on to her achievement of an education through perseverance and creativity.

This book illuminates the reality of border women's lives and challenges the conventional notion that women need not work for wages because they are economically supported by men. It offers insight into the lives of undocumented women.