A terrible result of economic globalization is sweatshops. Multinational corporations have been moving production facilities to developing countries in order to take advantage of cheap labor. As you can see in the video, most sweatshop workers are women. Most of the women are young and uneducated and consequently lack the knowledge and resources to stand up for themselves. Workers wages range from 5 to 20 cents per hour. They are often forced to work over time and not allowed bathroom breaks. The living conditions for sweatshop workers are crowded and dirty, and worst of all, women are often sexually harassed. Employers are known to falsely promise women better jobs in return for sexual favors. In a sweatshop in Saipan, pregnant women were forced to have abortions in order to keep their jobs. The treatment of women in sweatshops in truly horrific and I urge you all to be cognizant of where you shop.
This video is very powerful, as are the comments listed below the video. Clearly the video is made by college students, which is great and shows activism. However, others cannot handle the activism and are extremely ignorant with their comments. One comment says “yay sweatshops!!” and another says “I love retarded liberal college students pretending like they know everything when they know nothing... lets just shut down all the sweatshops don’t worry the children/mothers wont turn to worse things like prostitution.” It is shocking that people can actually be so ignorant. People need to become educated and aware of sweatshop conditions before change can actually occur.
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