Whose Labour Matters?
As millions of Indian farmers pour into the streets, threatening the global supply of grains, medicinal herbs, and spices, one question should be on everyone’s mind - whose labor matters?
Every day these protestors push the meaning of dignified work further, but the unsung song in the middle of all the chaos is that of the women. Women are the backbone of most industries, but their role in Indian agriculture has been long overlooked. Now, as photos of the millions of (mostly) men marching for an audience with the Prime Minister flood the internet, it becomes even more apparent that this fight has never included the women who are doing most of the labor.
While they own just 12.8% of all landholdings in the nation, they perform the bulk of the labor. Estimates place female participation in the agricultural sector at 73.2%. The majority of women in that position are working at the behest of their husbands and families. Forced into this uncompensated labor by economics or tradition, these women are largely unseen. This year nothing seems to be changing about that.
Men are the face of farming in the country and the face of the protests today. This isn’t the first time the farmers have shown their great discontent with Prime Minister Modi’s false promises, but it is the first time they have shown up in such high numbers. Risking their marginal profits, health, and future relationship with the government, these farmers are embarking on a journey that threatens to shake how the West in particular views labor in the Global South.
Still, the revolution isn’t about women -it’s about farmers. That distinction is crucial because we fail to address much of the root challenges to development, equality, and human rights when we fail to center women’s issues. At every level and in every industry, the problems faced by women at work are unique and necessary to create meaningful change.
The question pops up again - whose labor matters?
For me, the answer is simple women’s labor, specifically women of color in the West and women in the global south. It is the informal, unseen, and undervalued work that fuels the global economy. Whether it is the women working long hours in the maquiladoras in Latin America or the vast fields of India’s farmlands, this is the work that generates profit. On the backs of these women, fortune 500 companies, silicon valley tech bros, and the wealthiest men in the world have built their empires.
Western media have been notably silent about reporting on the injustice and civil unrest in India. Many people continue to speculate about why but the reasoning is quite apparent to me and many others in the South. Understanding the many intricate ties that bind production processes in the global south and the egregious wealth that lies in the West would probably spark massive protests.
Sure, we all understand that women and young girls make our clothes, and there are suicide nets outside the factories that make our cellphones but knowing those things and understanding the snowball effects of capitalist greed are different. It is easy and comfortable to picture these people in faraway factories benefiting in some way from our oppressive tactics; it’s another thing entirely to see them act on their frustration and rebel.
It is another thing entirely to understand how an avocado bought in LA means that a family in Chile goes without potable water, or how trade deals like NAFTA and USMCA that make goods cheap in the US mean that thousands of women die in Juarez. These are the harsh realities of Western wealth and comfort. These events are inextricably linked.
The foundations of the system that bleeds the South dry for egregious Western profits were laid long before the world we know now came to be. To understand, we need to go back to a time where the West was more explicitly enjoying the fruit of colonial exploitation.
In his book, Black Marxism, Cedric J Robinson explores the origins of African enslavement in the New World. The story he tells is one of a direct correlation between European (particularly Italian) capitalism and new world colonialism.
Before Columbus ever embarked upon his journey, slave labor was already in use within the small empires European nations were building. The colonies of wealthy Spanish and Portuguese nobility extended into the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, sprawled across the Mediterranean, and had just extended into the Atlantic Sea. The aristocrats who made their living by taking part in these colonial expeditions frequently used slavery to supplement in times of high demand. But as Italian capitalists began to conspire with Spanish and Portuguese royalty, slave labor soon became the most widely used get-rich-quick scheme in the freshly colonized island of Madeira in the Atlantic Sea.
Columbus came to the forefront of Spanish politics at a time of great change in the aristocracy. He was perfectly situated to embody this convergence of European powers, the son of an Italian merchant capitalist who married into lesser Portuguese nobility but was employed by the Spanish crown. He arrived in the new world primed for this new form of capitalist oppression. This was the preamble to the Atlantic slave trade.
The slave trade would soon see millions of Africans taken from their homeland, stripped, packed, and shipped to the faraway countries that lay on the other side of the ocean. The actual number of people who were so brutally enslaved is unknown, but estimates place it at over 15 million.
It was by taking indigenous land and enslaving once free peoples that colonial puppet masters enriched themselves and their countries. Soon England, Portugal, and Spain ballooned on the wealth they took from the colonies. England had used the expansion of empire to transform itself into a fully industrial capitalist state. The subjugation of the colonized people was central to the power and development of the new metropolises forming in Western Europe.
That was how things worked for many centuries; free labor in the Global South made for high profit margins in the West.
But, like many other capitalist endeavors, it was unsustainable. Revolts and riots forced colonists to cease slavery as a practice. Still, ever since then, white men have followed in their predecessors’ tradition to find new ways to enslave their former colonial conquests.
Today that manifests in the many multinational (that is to say, American or European based) corporations that have robbed governments of their country’s resources in exchange for short-term gain. In some ways, nothing has changed. But one thing that certainly has is the capitalist victimization of women.
While the time of slavery saw many horrible atrocities inflicted on both men and women who worked for European slave masters, women were, for the most part, relegated to domestic work. After many bids for independence and economic freedom, women have become an even more significant part of the visible labor force. Whether formally or informally, female labor is generating massive amounts of wealth in the Global South.
The South is struggling to achieve what the West has in its hundreds of years of colonialism, and it is quickly realizing that the growth the world is demanding requires oppression. It requires human rights abuses; it requires dehumanization and disconnection. At the end of the day, women are being forced to bear the brunt of the struggle.
International organizations are quick to talk of the “rise of the Global South” but slow to acknowledge the failures of implanting capitalist value systems into these countries. Slow to speak on garment factory collapses in Bangladesh or miscarriages in maquiladoras. Slow to address the severe human cost of this “rise” to Western standards. Even less acknowledged is the role of foreign investment in that development.
While foreign investment was once revered as the best way to promote development, but now more people recognize the system’s inherent flaws. It results in mega corps like Chiquita (aka “the United Fruit Company”) buying out small producers and taking the bulk of their profits. These are roundabout ways for well established and privileged people (usually men) to profit from cheap, exploited labor.
The “rise of the Global South” is coming at a cost. One we, here in the South, are not prepared to pay. It looks like women working for no pay in India, and Modi attempting to rob the few farmers who do profit of their money. It looks ugly and disturbing because this “rise” is just another form of colonial violence.
Again, the South is footing the bill for Western enrichment. And again, the question lingers- whose labor matters?
If not these women, who are laboring in the shadows - then who?
Is it the men who sit atop the fortune they are building for them? That seems to be who we value, at least with money.
As the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos is the face of labor that matters today. News media is eager to tell us his story, to sell us another falsehood about our ability to accrue a fortune like his. Yet, at the same time, we see thousands of videos from Amazon employees crying out for better pay and working conditions- to say nothing of those who provide the goods that Amazon ships.
Long hours, few (if any) breaks, constant walking- these are just some complaints pouring out of the over 100 warehouses across the US. Yet, when asked about the importance of a “work-life balance,” Bezos neatly side steps any accusation of rights violations and skips to what might be the most capitalist concept of work ever.
He talks about a “work-life harmony” because “balance” implies a strict trade-off. He goes on to talk about his own experience, saying: “I find that when I am happy at work, I come home more energized, I’m a better husband, a better dad.” The problem is that it implies that your work should either spark joy or bring you the energizing positivity that allows you to be a better person at home. But that isn’t what Amazon’s work culture promotes; a culture which he actively claims he is proud of.
He says this, and yet the work he puts forward for his employees is grueling and repetitive. It doesn’t spark joy or intrigue. It doesn’t promote balance. And it proves what we all know, the work that matters - that builds an empire, isn’t joyous, it doesn’t create harmony.
Much of the work that makes his “work-life harmony” possible takes place on the ground floor in overheating warehouses, places he never has to see. Therein lies the problem, the work that generates wealth is far removed from those that keep it.
Slavery was built on disconnect and the dehumanization that comes with racist, imperial, and ultimately capitalist mindsets. That is what allows us to make choices that directly impoverish and oppress our fellow humans. Bosses are removed from their workers, consumers are removed from the supply chain, and the meaning is removed from those who labor.
Globalization and the nature of this increasingly globalized world have to make us ask - whose labor matters. We have to keep questioning that and questioning how best we can make sure that the money ends with those working. Moreover, we need to keep pushing our governments to ensure that the workers who matter are getting paid like it.
What that looks like for you or your country might be different, but what is essential is that we are all seeking to close the gap between pay and the labor that matters.
Hayley Headley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley