Violence and harassment faced by women migrant workers in Latin America

Written on 09 January 2020.

Women migrant workers across Latin America endure extreme violence in order to be able to provide for their families, according to research carried out among workers in the garment, domestic, service, sex and hawking sectors.

Economic precarity was the driving factor for accepting poverty wages and poor working conditions:

• Workers in maquilas (garment factories) in Guatemala and Brazil work around 12 hours per day, locked in factories until production targets are reached, for as little as 200 US dollars a month.

• Some live-in domestic workers in Colombia work seven days a week, up to 15 hours a day, with salaries under minimum wages and in some cases with no salary at all.

All participants said that the constant economic instability and job insecurity in which they find themselves makes them accept conditions that in another context they would never have imagined enduring.

The research aimed to explore gender-based violence in the world of work from the perspective of women migrant workers. The 172 women interviewed by eight Latin American civil society organisations reported experiencing a spectrum of violence and discrimination, through dynamics created by patriarchal societies and families, racism and xenophobia and an entrenched neoliberal capitalist economy. This is creating a ‘new normal’ of permanent precarity through a lack of social coverage, poverty wages, exploitative working conditions and job insecurity. 

Main Findings

Economic Coercion

The prospect of being unemployed and unable to support families, pay for education, healthcare, food and housing was the primary reason why participants endured the situations they described. Speaking out and protesting would get them dismissed and have pay withheld and most felt that ‘it’s better to keep quiet’.

Gendered care burdens push women into precarious migration and work. Migrant women are responsible for the physical, emotional and financial care and support of their families. This triple burden pushes them to accept low paid jobs and to work under exploitative conditions.

The intersectional discrimination that women migrants face in accessing services amplifies this trend and coerces them to tolerate all kinds of violence.  

(No) Rights at Work:

• Poverty Wages: Most participants reported being paid both below the national minimum wage, and less than men and local workers doing the same work.
• Excessive working hours and demanding work with few or no days off were common; in some cases it meant constant availability.
• Contractual relationships are mostly verbal and they are continuously breached.
• Most of the time employers do not insure workers nor affiliate them with the national social security systems.
• Workers are denied health care even if sick or injured.
• Participants also reported being fired suddenly and without justification.
• Women migrants experienced limitations on their freedom of movement, through confinement or the retention of identity documents.

Physical and Psychological Violence: Of the sectors in this study, domestic workers and sex workers report the most physical and verbal violence:

• In the case of domestic workers, verbal and physical abuse is exercised by employers and their family members: ‘She explained to me by beating me; she pinched me, she hit me on the head, but I had to put up with it’.

• In the case of sex workers, this violence is extreme and in many cases results in disappearance and murder. Colleagues who attempt to track down missing sex workers with the help of the authorities are met with indifference.

Sex workers are also the only group of workers who reported extreme violence by neighbours, churches and journalists. They described an incident in which a group of neighbours confronted sex workers on the street, ripped off their clothes, whipped them with sticks, and finally pushed them into a river and threatened to burn them alive.

Sexual Violence and Harassment: Sexual harassment is used as a form of abuse of power and control throughout the work cycle (hiring, permanence, promotion): ‘the employer told me that I was too young for that job, but that he could help me if I could “behave well” with him. [...] for him to give me the job, I had to sleep with him’.

Surveillance and Control: Many migrant workers in precarious work live under constant supervision and control. The study with domestic workers in Colombia shows how employers appropriate the women’s bodies with the justification that they ‘know what’s best’: ‘My employer said I had no right to have friends, or a boyfriend or to have sex, because poor women are ignorant’.

Multiple and Intersecting Forms of Discrimination: Discrimination and violence experienced by migrant women varied along lines of race, nationality and work sector, while women were also subject to racist and sexist stereotypes.

• Black Colombian women seeking domestic work told researchers that they would regularly be told that a job was no longer available once a recruiter or employer saw they were black or be told ‘this job is not for black women.’

• In Brazil, Bolivian women heard that they fall far short of the beauty standards of Brazilian society. ‘They always tell me: you are the ugliest woman in the world’. Venezuelan women were subject to stereotypes of hyper-sexuality and promiscuity in Peru and Colombia: ‘They wanted me to dress and be “suggestive” with customers in order to sell more; “commercial flirting” they called it.’

• Sex workers face particular situations of violence that begin with the criminalisation of their work, the threat of taking their children away from them, and mandatory medical exams and pregnancy tests.

No Justice: Most cases of labour rights violations are not reported for well-founded fear of dismissal or reprisals or for lack of credibility in the institutions responsible for ensuring compliance with labour legislation.

Victim Blaming: The conversations revealed a culture of victim blaming both among women and from employers and society where women are seen to have invited sexual harassment and violence through their behaviour and clothes.

Discrimination in accessing public services compounding the impact of discrimination and violence: Participants mentioned different treatment towards them compared to that received by national workers, and contempt from public institutions, their employers and society in general for being foreigners or for ignoring cultural codes.

State Violence: Institutional violence, exercised by public officials was common among informal sector workers:

• Street vendors in Argentina reported situations of physical abuse, verbal aggression and removal of merchandise by the police.
• In addition to physical and verbal aggressions by public officials, sex workers in Mexico face threats, gang rape, false accusations and extortion.

Violence at home and its impact on the World of Work: Many of the participants suffered violence first at home, by their partners. When this violence occurred in families living in garment workshops, it was amplified by the fact that there is no separation between family life and working life. Women discussed witnessing violence suffered by other women, to the point that is seen as a normal occurrence.

‘Once in my room, I heard a woman crying.  Her husband was drunk and had beaten her badly. Her face was all bruised. It's horrible; people are listening, but really can't do anything. I asked her if she wanted me to go with her to the police, but she didn’t want to. It is what it is. I also had my days when I was beaten. We feel very ashamed because everyone finds out. But the next day we carry on as if nothing happened and life goes on”.

A Cycle of Exploitation

Many of the workers have remained in a cycle of exploitation during their migration process. Economic and social structures operate in such a way that the first labour option found by migrant women is within feminised jobs, where precariousness and informality are the rule. Indebtedness has become systemic, where economic need makes the labour relationship become a lender-debtor relationship.  

Breaking the Cycle

The research findings are evidence that exploitation and violations of labour rights are not an aberration of our economic system, but are integrated into the neo-liberal, patriarchal economic paradigm, and breaking the cycle of exploitation requires a transformative feminist and worker-centred approach.

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