Bananas, Beaches And Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1990

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface 1-Chapter 1

Chapters 2-3

Chapters 4-5

Chapters 6-7

Chapter 8-Conclusion

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 6-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 6 Summary: “Going Bananas! Where Are Women in the International Politics of Bananas?”

The sale of bananas is a large, globalized business. Ecuador is the largest exporter, and the three largest production corporations (Dole, Chiquita, and Del Monte) are based in the US. The US is the top importer of bananas, and the EU is second. Women and men have different roles in the production of bananas since banana politics is gendered.

Between 1880 and 1930, the US colonized or invaded Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Nicaragua, all of which had plantation crops. However, the use of military force was becoming a liability by 1933, as it was alienating potential allies. With the help of Hollywood, the US began employing a more cooperative, or “Good Neighbor,” policy. Popular Brazilian actress Carmen Miranda became a Hollywood star known for her outrageous hats and thereby also became the face of Latin American women. She and other Latin American movie stars “replaced the marines as the guarantors of regional harmony” (217). The US was invoking the softer power of cultural icons.

Though 67 varieties of bananas are available, the Cavendish (or yellow) banana graces most American and European tables. First served to wealthy Bostonians in 1875, it soon became an international commodity. From the beginning, its production was shaped by notions of masculinity and femininity. Originally, the workforce was all men, and the job entailed clearing land for plantations in Central and Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Philippines. These men worked away from their homes, and they were assisted by female sex workers, mothers, and wives. Envisioning female consumers, companies created marketing mascots, such as the Chiquita Banana, which was half woman and half banana, to create brand loyalty among women for a generic fruit. Today, every affluent country imports bananas from primarily poor countries, and large agribusinesses dominate the market. While Latin America exports 82% of the world’s bananas, countries elsewhere have a smaller percentage of exports but still rely economically on bananas.

The term “banana republic,” created in 1935, refers to a country dominated by a foreign company in collusion with a repressive government. Central American nations were thus dominated by United Fruit, later renamed Chiquita. Men not only cleared the land for plantations but also chopped and carried heavy bunches of bananas. However, the gendered division of labor was not static. If companies needed to reduce labor costs, they used women. Enloe argues that international corporations manipulate concepts of masculinity, femininity, and race to retain and advance their position in world markets. In the 1980s, women began to advocate for their interests in the banana industry.

The industry relies on women’s paid and unpaid labor. When men live on the plantations, women run the farms at home. However, they are denied legal title to the land they farm and face discrimination in obtaining supplies. Additionally, the industry hires women to work in the packinghouses, where they wash the pesticides off the bananas and pack them. They are paid poorly, at piece rates (i.e., by productivity rather than by the hour), and live in crowded and poor conditions. Corporations control female employees via sexual harassment and below-subsistence wages. The latter circumstance forces many to supplement their wages as sex workers serving the male workers, which the corporations encourage because it helps control the men, so they are less likely to leave their jobs: They spend money on sex and thus accumulate debts at company stores.

During the 1990s, global corporations were in conflict over the European Union imposing tariffs on Latin American bananas to protect West African and Caribbean bananas. Although Latin American bananas are produced on large plantations owned by American corporations, the local growers in West Africa and the Caribbean are not truly independent and are also exploited by corporations. Ultimately, after 20 years, the World Trade Organization ruled against the European Union. Enloe notes that both the local grower cooperatives and the large corporations have marginalized and disempowered women.

Men who work on banana plantations have organized for decades. In Honduras in 1985, female banana workers, called bananeras, actively sought to create a women’s committee in the union. The men refused and ridiculed the women’s activism, which motivated them even more. During the next few years, the women approached sympathetic male leaders and made sure that they knew how critical their support was for any union campaign. In 1988, they succeeded in forming a committee and began holding workshops for women, teaching them leadership skills. By 2002, women were elected to senior posts in banana unions. Corporations responded by hiring younger women whom they assumed would be more compliant. However, the senior women held workshops to educate the new workers. In 2012, the women held the first global meeting of female banana workers and smallholders. Iris Munguia, the first female senior coordinator of the federation of banana unions, launched the meeting. As a result, Chiquita promised to take complaints of sexual harassment seriously. Enloe comments that banana production is not a natural process and is not static. Executives and local political elites (all mostly men) shape its politics, but women’s activism can change this.

Chapter 7 Summary: “Women’s Labor Is Never Cheap: Gendering Global Blue Jeans and Bankers”

On November 24, 2012, the Tazreen Fashions factory in Bangladesh caught fire, leaving 112 people (virtually all women) dead and scores injured. Five months later, on April 24, 2013, the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh collapsed, killing 1,129 workers (mainly women) in garment factories. At Tazreen, male supervisors told women to continue sewing when they reported smelling smoke. Doors were locked and blocked when they tried to escape. This fire was reminiscent of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York in 1911. The women in Bangladesh were working 11 hours a day, six days a week, to ensure that the male factory owners made the deadlines set by brand-name companies, such as Gap and Tommy Hilfiger. The local factory owners had ties with the Bangladeshi officials (all men) who overlooked fire and safety violations. This scandal made international news, so brand-name companies sought to assure US and European Union consumers that steps were being taken to ensure the rights and safety of workers but wanted to continue to offer low-cost apparel. The latter goal took precedence. By the time of the Tazreen disaster in 2012, Bangladesh had 4,500 garment factories with three million employees. The low wages and lack of governmental enforcement of health and safety regulations attracted foreign investors. Bangladesh factories became even more alluring when Chinese garment workers successfully pushed for higher wages.

Via the control of ideas about girls and women, women’s labor is deliberately made cheap. In 1990, only 28% of the garment workers in Bangladesh were women. However, by 2002, 85% were women because of a plan to feminize and lower labor costs. Women must be made visible to understand how their labor is cheapened. The intentional manipulation of job organization and machinery design creates this effect. Several groups of people, including parents, legislators, and management, help keep female garment workers in line. Before the invention of sewing machines, garment makers were considered skilled artisans. Sewing machines enabled factory owners to introduce a division of labor and a piece-rate wage system. They feminized the workforce and diluted the potential for solidarity via a competitive system.

Enloe notes that any piece of clothing has a gendered history. Levi Strauss stayed in the US longer than most clothing manufacturers. It moved its factories to the South and relied on minority women (who were paid poorly) to make them. By 2004, the company moved labor to the Philippines and other low-wage countries. Between 1970 and 1986, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union lost 200,000 members in the US. However, the economic difficulties of these women were overlooked given their gender. British companies originally relied on Black and Asian women to make clothing in their homes for low pay. Those companies also shifted to Bangladesh. In the 1970s, Nike produced sneakers in South Korea, which then had a militarized government. When female workers led the shift to democracy and called for better working conditions, Nike and other manufacturers shifted to Indonesia and relied on young, rural women to work for low wages.

Enloe explains that bankers are the “prime movers” in globalizing the garment industry and its reliance on low-wage female workers since banks tie government and company loans to the borrowers’ ability to offer competitive garment prices (276). That demand leads to reduced labor costs. In the US, only 16% of banking executives are women, and no woman has ever been head of the European Union’s Central Bank or president of the World Bank. The overwhelming masculinization of international banking results in the destabilization of governments, the distortion of public priorities, the undermining of inclusive democracy, and widening income gaps. If female garment workers organize and make demands, their country is listed as a poor investment.

Garment managers rely on four incorrect patriarchal assumptions: that sewing is not a skill but something women do naturally, that women’s labor can be kept cheap by reserving skilled jobs for men, that women are secondary earners in their families, and that single women are temporary employees. Most employees in light industries, which are decentralized and global, are women, while most employees in heavy industries, which are influential in national politics, are men. When a country moves from garments to steel, its international standing improves. Moreover, the concerns of those industries equate with national security. Women’s labor in light industries enabled businessmen in South Korea to accumulate capital and launch heavy industries in the 1980s.

On September 19, 1985, a powerful earthquake struck Mexico City, destroying 800 small garment factories (small subcontractors that sold their products to international companies). More than 1,000 workers died, and 40,000 were left without jobs. To the outrage of female workers, cranes and soldiers were brought in to rescue sewing machines before workers. Women blocked the trucks from exiting with the equipment, demanding their paychecks. Middle-class women assisted them and helped publicize their demands. The female garment workers launched their own union independent of political parties and raised the issue of domestic violence. The government initially certified the union but withdrew that certification when journalists left, sending “thugs” to throw stones at female activists. The union did not survive the North American Free Trade Agreement, which passed in 1994, but the Mexican women’s movement remains active.

China recruited young rural women for the garment industry, assuming that they would be replaceable, hardworking, and unorganized. Government officials and their local allies, Taiwanese subcontractors, and clothing company executives (all predominantly men) favored that model of femininity. In time, the Chinese workers acted collectively, embarrassing Nike, Apple, and other companies by calling for better wages and working conditions. Their gains made China less competitive and Bangladesh more alluring.

Banks, clothing stores, contractors, government officials, consumers, parents, and labor unions all contribute to the cheapening of women’s labor. Even after the disasters in Bangladesh, governments and corporations dragged their heels in committing to safer conditions. In June 2013, the Obama administration suspended Bangladesh’s trade privileges until it committed to safer conditions. In Bangladesh, the factory owners’ association exerted influence over the government, and there were too few inspectors to ensure legal compliance.

Chapters 6-7 Analysis

Enloe’s analysis of two global industries, banana production and clothing, exemplifies the devastating impact of international politics on women’s daily lives. When men left home to clear banana plantations, women assumed the responsibility of running family farms. However, they had no claim to the land and were refused necessary supplies because of their gender. Once banana plantations were planted, women were paid below-subsistence wages to wash pesticides off the bananas and pack them. Many incurred rashes and burns from contact with the pesticides. Some of these women supplemented their below-subsistence wages by moonlighting as sex workers serving male plantation workers. In addition, female workers were sexually harassed on the job. The garment industry is even more dangerous for women. Enloe cites multiple examples of preventable tragedies in which scores of women were killed in fires and building collapses. In Bangladesh, women worked 11 hours a day, six days a week, in unsafe, unsanitary factories. In mainstream accounts of international politics, these women are invisible. Their critical contribution to these industries goes unnoticed, as does the denial of their rights. While hiding the realities of product production, companies use women as symbols in marketing campaigns.

Nothing is natural about a system that concentrates women in dangerous, low-wage jobs. Once again, stakeholders in the current distribution of power prop this system up. Executives (predominantly men) relocate factories to countries that have poor human rights laws and a culture in which young women are unlikely to challenge authority. When women in South Korea helped topple the military government and called for better pay, Nike and other apparel companies left for Indonesia. When Chinese women made demands for safer conditions and a minimum wage, some clothing manufacturers moved to Bangladesh. There, local officials (predominantly men) do not enforce safety and fire laws, and rural women need jobs. Despite horrific tragedies there, conditions remain unsafe in several factories. Enloe highlights the complicity of banks (whose decision makers are primarily men) in this exploitation since the profitability levels they demand when granting loans result in low wages and unsafe conditions. In other words, predominantly men have created and sustained this system.

Consistent with her analyses of other industries, Enloe highlights women as actors in these industries. Women have challenged systems of power and/or participated in them. Female banana workers organized, despite resistance from the union leaders (who were men). Ultimately, they forced companies to promise to take sexual harassment seriously. Similarly, women in the garment industry have organized and, in China, won better working conditions and pay. Thus, women have challenged national and international politics.