Women & Change Chapter 7

Chapter seven titled “Domestic Service and International Networks of Caring Labor” by Doreen J. Mattingly has in-depth interviews from both domestic workers and their employees from San Diego, California where two very important issues are looked at. The first issue looks at the relationship between “social reproduction and women’s migration” (104). This is the further look and critical analysis of how these lower income women migrate to wealthy nations that have demands for these women service workers. The second issue examines the “complex connections” or gender, race/ethnicity, and nationality and how it shapes and is shaped by the institution of domestic servitude.
The general profile of the women and families that seek to employ these domestic workers are usually families that are of a high income, have been to college and/or received a college degree and they employ mostly women to do cooking, cleaning, but sometimes these duties extend further to taking care of the children and posing as nannies. Most of the women interviewed placed an emphasis on time. They don’t have time to do this and that or that employing women for these jobs helps them to save time. However in previous chapters we learned about women’s mobility so I wonder do these families ever think about what it takes for these migrant women to get these jobs locations which I can only imagine is a far distance.
In the section of chapter Immigration, Domestic Work, and Inequality hold description of how these domestic workers and their employers balance their own personal family lives. I thought it was interesting when it is said that most of the employers rely on the migrant and poor, low income women for childcare and the women who are domestic workers rely on relatives that are “poorly paid labor”. Mattingly suggests that these childcare strategies are both connected however, they are interdependent also. It is said that “they strategies these two groups of women use to access additional caring labor also construct and reinforce difference, as evidenced by the way different responsibilities and resources of young women in the two groups of households “ (120). I think that these women may feel that they are totally different however they share some of the same complications of being women who work. Although their experiences may be different, incomes/wages, and living arrangements they should realize how similar they are. I wonder if they even do.

Women & Change p. 36-52

In this chapter titled “Women’s Daily Mobility at the U.S.-Mexico Border” by Ellen R. Hansen speaks about how mobility (getting around) for the women is effected, and how “…women’s mobility illustrates gender roles and relations”(36). For the women to travel between Douglas, Arizona & Auga Prieta, Sonora, Mexico for work their daily mobility was effected vastly by the attacks at the world trade center on September 11, 2001. I honestly never even really thought about how anyone was affected by September 11th other than Americans. I understand that goes with nationality and being unaware, but I honestly never really considered it. Because the U.S.-Mexico border is so unpredictable and can be opened and closed over time, September 11th caused harsher security measures where people were being watched and inspected and it increased the time in which these women spent going over the border to work. For many of the women their days are so specifically planned on when they leave home, coordinating with their childcare providers, transportation, grocery shopping, etc.
Transportation out of all of the women’s day it probably the most important key to their mobility. However transportation is gendered as well. There was a story of one woman who would coordinate dropping off various family members with their families’ only vehicle to her own work schedule. There was a woman where she and her husband would do a lot of driving and trading off driving throughout the day, but whenever she and her husband were together in the car he would always drive. This part of the gendered aspect speaks volumes of how these couples may be modern or the new generation, but yet many traditional values/roles still present themselves in small situations.
The last piece about transportation that was brought up that was very interesting the in Auga Prieta there is a public transportation system that is reliable although it is considered unreliable so most women choose to walk. Compared to the public transportation system in Douglas, Arizona that does not exist although the roads are modern and paved and the roads in Auga Prieta are not. It is interesting that here in the United States that there is no transportation system where you would that there would be one. I wonder if one has not been developed for a reason. Is the government and local officials trying to make a way where it would be harder of these Mexican and Indigenous women to get to work? This sounds like a nationality based discrimination to decreased mobility. Just a few thoughts.

Women and Change Pg. 19-35

This chapter of Women and Change titled “The Unsettling, Gendered Consequences of Migration for Mexican Indigenous Women” by Elizabeth Maier speaks about how the traditionally gendered roles have been dramatically changed thanks to women entering the workforce/who have been working. In recent years since more and more women have been going to work, more and more families are moving away from patriarchal control, and through these changes women are finding empowerment, entitlement, and citizenship.
Migration which is often times hard creates a new type of network of these migrant workers who move to communities along the U.S.-Mexico Boarder. It is said that “migrant networks ease adaptation in unknown socioeconomic and cultural environments. They are cultural support systems wrapped around gender-based social diversions that orient recent arrivals as to how to satisfy basic needs, administer natural resources, and find employment, or contact coyotes for crossing the boarder” (23). This sounds like a self-serving kind of network where people who do migrate to different areas and would not otherwise know anyone or anything, it is set up for people to acquire what they may need without having to go to the government for it, or worse, starve. This kind of networking is not only just amongst migrant workers, but it is gendered.
The gendered networking helps the “new” and “progressive” women who are working with a different set of necessities than those created for migrant workers. These women not only have to worry about basic needs, or finding jobs, but they have their families to worry about. These women have created networks where solidarity is created first. Other women understand and sympathize with each other and understand although they may work and feel like “modern” women, they still have to care of their families, the home, etc.
For these women this gendered work can be helped in some ways and hindered in others. One woman recounted how she always asks her sons to help her out with house work by cleaning their rooms or making their beds, however they don’t which adds to the work that she has to do in the home after putting a full day outside of the home. I quickly scribbled as a side note asking the question if machismo will ever change as new generations come in that have been used to home where gendered roles are much more progressive? Really I want to know will these sons ever get off their lazy behinds and help their mothers.
Secondly, for the women who are doing gendered roles, it is lucky for those who can get their hands on modern convinces like cars or dishwashers, refrigerators, etc. because the workload is cut into half. I could see that possibly happening because it is said that gender is ever changing thanks to relocation, generation differences, but it takes time. It is said that
“…gender is particularly prone to readjustments and rearrangement. Newfound niches of female socioeconomic activity, together with the evolving demise of arranged marriages, second-generation access to sexual education and family planning, bilingual and trilingual proficiency, increased schooling for girls, and the emergence of some women professionals all suggest an ongoing blurring of the strict sexual divisions of hometown community life” (27).
In these women is an increased sense of entitlement. What kind of entitlement is the first question that came to my head. These younger women who work as maquiladoras are a new generation and “they have a better understanding of mestiza culture, exhibit greater participation in intercultural institutions, and display more complexity and determination in the formulation of chains” (30). These women understand where they still need to respect their culture and cultural expectations however, they have found that place where they are able to negotiate what they want, who they want to be and still have that respect for culture. These women are educated, they decide when they marry, but still be able to honor traditional values as much as possible without conflicting too much with their new set of traditions and values.

Women and Change at the U.S.-Mexico Border pg 3-16

The book “Women and Change at the U.S.- Mexico Border” by Doreen J. Mattingly and Ellen R. Hansen opens up with speaking about the roles such as family life and working in factories, home life, etc. for the women who work in cities along the U.S.-Mexico boarder. They say that these women are apart of a larger force. They are apart of a movement. The chapters in the book helped the reader though stories learn about these women's experiences which include genders as a changing social construct, how gender is still a challenge in which these women must negotiate when working in these factories and raising families, and also that the U.S.-Mexico boarder is a type of window that allow a way in which women will cross boundaries if not physically but mentally.
Section one of book titled Women’s Mobility speak of gendered roles for men and women and that geographic mobility it in fact effected by gender. Through the different chapters in the section one will learn how migration effects indigenous women along the boarder, also how mobility is gendered through the division of labor- the reality is that men and women hold different jobs and have a different set of responsibilities and obligations.
The next section is about Labor and Empowerment in the Boarder Region it is said that a woman being employed is a “catch-22” or a “double-edged sword”. This section also offers theories to the reasoning of why industrialization has gendered impact.
In the last section titled Activist Women Changing the Border touches on how working conditions are for these women and problems and reasons why they choose to cross the border. Some reasons has been that there is a development of colnias at a very staggering rate creating new communities along the border. These women became activists due to the needs that we not reached in the lower-income communities. Also these women have formed NGO’s which are like unions.