UCLA CSW Update Newsletter Title From Misogyny to Murder: Everyday Sexism and Femicide in a Cross-Cultural Context Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5tw6h8nk Author Rodriguez, Gilda Publication Date 2010-12-01 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California CSW u p d atdecember e2010 15 From Misogyny to Murder Everyday Sexism and Femicide in Cross-Cultural Context BY GILDA RODRÍGUEZ N THE AFTERMATH OF THE MONTREAL MASSACRE OF 1989, in Iwhich Marc Lépine killed fourteen women—after ordering men out of the room and claiming he was “fighting feminism”—Jane Caputi and Diana Russell coined the term “femicide” to describe the killing of women qua women. The original definition emphasizes that femi- cide is only the most extreme form in a continuum that includes the many forms of violence against women, ranging from rape and sexual abuse to forced sterilization.1 However, femicide is not only related to other forms of explicit violence against women but also to everyday acts of misogyny that contribute to the creation of a culture of sexism and devalorization of women and their lives. These everyday sexist acts are often ignored or minimized, in such a way that their connection to large-scale forms of violence against women is obscured. The discon- nect between everyday misogyny and femicide in much of popular and media discourse is problematic on two counts. First, it contributes to 1. Jane Caputi and Diana E.H. Russell, “Femicide: Speaking the Unspeakable,” Femi- cide: The Politics of Woman Killing, ed. Jill Radford and Diana E.H. Russell (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992), 15. 16 csw update: december 2010 ...femicide is not only related to other forms of explicit violence against women but also to everyday acts of misogyny that contrib- ute to the creation of a culture of sexism and devalorization of wom- en and their lives. These everyday sexist acts are often ignored or minimized, in such a way that their connection to large-scale forms of violence against women is obscured. the mischaracterization of gender-based mur- Since early 1993, over 500 Mexican foreign-owned assembly plants that are a der as simple killing, without a misogynistic women have been killed in the industrial major economic force in the area. Maquila- component, which makes it difficult to address border city of Juárez, in the state of Chi- doras predominantly seek female employ- the root causes of such violence. Secondly, huahua. A majority of the victims are poor ees because of their overwhelming need when “small” incidences of sexism occur, they or working-class girls and young women. for unskilled labor that is inexpensive, are more easily dismissed as inconsequential Their bodies are found in remote areas, easy to train and unlikely to file complaints and even harmless. My argument is that com- often bearing signs of sexual abuse and about workplace conditions. A stereotyped monplacesexist practices lay the conditions other physical violence. Although several view of “the malleable working woman”2 for femicide and for the political discourse that arrests have been made in connection to shaped the maquiladoras’ policy of hiring surrounds it. To this end, I examine two cases the murders, the crimes continue. The in- women, whose very femininity suppos- studies: the over five hundred femicides that ability of the authorities to solve the mur- edly made them docile, more apt for tasks have occurred in the border city of Juárez, ders, the result of both incompetence and requiring a high level of dexterity, and far Mexico, since 1993, and George Sodini’s corruption, has made Juárez an extremely less likely to be demanding that their male murder of three women in a gym in a suburb dangerous place to be a woman. More counterparts. of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in August of 2009. importantly, the lack of value accorded Very often, maquiladora workers and Though different in both scale and duration, to the lives of women in Juárez has made job applicants are subjected to pregnancy among other factors, these gendered crimes in it possible for the murders to go on with Mexico and the United States show how perva- impunity. 2. Leslie Salzinger, “From High Heels to Swathed Bod- sive the link is between everyday sexist prac- A great number of the femicide victims ies: Gendered Meanings under Production in Mexico’s tices and femicide across cultural contexts. were employed in Juárez’s maquiladoras, Export-Processing Industry,” Feminist Studies, 23.3 (Autumn 1997), 549–574. 17 csw update: december 2010 tests3 and lengthy questioning about mari- Melissa Wright links the disregard for Caputi and Russell argue that “[m]isog- tal status and personal plans, because em- the value of women in the maquiladora yny not only motivates violence against ployers favor young, single women who are environment to the devaluing of women’s women, but distorts the press coverage of less likely to miss work due to domestic lives implicit in the murders. She con- such crimes as well. […] The police, me- responsibilities.4 The maquiladora model is ceptualizes the high rates of turnover as dia and public response to crimes against built on a conception of its workers as dis- a corporate death of sorts, in which the women of color, poor women, lesbians, posable. The hard physical labor makes it women’s labor is more valued than the women prostitutes, and women drug users impossible for most women to work in the women themselves. As long as the plants is particularly abysmal—generally apa- industry for more than a few years, when produce goods cheaply and efficiently, the thy laced with pejorative stereotyping and their bodies can no longer keep up. The owners do not care about who is produc- victim-blaming.”7 The discourse around restrictions on pregnancy and marriage, ing them. As Wright explains, “turnover the Juárez femicides follows this pattern: and the lack of accommodations for wom- itself […] is not necessarily a waste but the dark-skinned, working-class female en with children, make it so the realities of the by-product of a process during which victims receive little attention in the Mexi- these women’s lives are often in conflict human beings turn into industrial waste.”6 can national media, and, when they do, with their employers’ expectations, and The maquiladora workers are disposable they are often accused of being “loose,” thus the turnover rate is high. However, the and always replaceable. The basic human as if their perceived morality in some way labor supply is plentiful,5 and, aware of this rights of a woman, like that of privacy, can makes their deaths acceptable. A prosecu- competition, maquiladora workers often be violated because if she resists such a vi- tor for the state of Chihuahua famously prefer not to speak up when overworked olation, there will be another worker eager suggested implementing a curfew to stop or abused, and go to great lengths to hide and ready to take her place. the murders, because it would keep “good pregnancies and find alternative childcare The disposability of the women, and people” off the street at night8—implying arrangements. more specifically their bodies, then, is that the lives of so-called loose women common to both the murders and maqui- were expendable. The current president, 3. A federal anti-pregnancy discrimination law was only passed in 2003, and its enforcement is lax, particularly in ladora work. Despite the efforts of local Felipe Calderón, has remained tight-lipped the maquiladora sector. Emily Miyamoto Faber, “Preg- and international nongovernmental orga- on the subject, while devoting consider- nancy discrimination in Latin America: the exclusion of nizations, the murders continue, and the able energy (and several trips to Juárez) ‘employment discrimination’ from the definition of ‘labor laws’ in the Central American Free Trade Agreement,” gendered basis for the violence is often to drug-related violence. In 2005, his Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, 16 (2007), 307. ignored. The already-high incidence of predecessor, Vicente Fox, accused the 4. Patricia Fernández-Kelly, “Maquiladoras: The View crime in Juárez—much of it related to the media of sensationalizing crimes that, he from the Inside,” The Women, Gender, and Development Reader, ed. Nalini Visvanathan et al (London: Zed Books, drug trade—has escalated in recent years, claimed, had been solved and were no 1997), 208; Melissa Wright, “The Dialectics of Still Life: making it difficult to distinguish, in media longer a problem. At the same time, the Murder, Women and Maquiladoras,” Millennial Capitalism and political narratives, the gender-based maquiladoras, which deny any connection and the Culture of Neoliberalism, eds Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2001), 140. murders from ones motivated by other 7. Caputi and Russell, 15. 5. Althea J. Cravey, Women and Work in Mexico’s Maqui- causes. 8. Lourdes Portillo, Señorita Extraviada (New York, NY: ladoras (Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 72. 6. Melissa Wright, Disposable Women and Other Myths of Women Make Movies, 2002). Global Capitalism (New York: Routledge, 2006), 83. 18 csw update: december 2010 “Sodini,” said a member of the Allegheny County Police Department, “just had a lot of hatred in him, and he was hellbent on doing this act.” The gunman chose the aerobics class, he said, simply because it had a lot of women in it. between their practices and the femicides, opening fire in a female space in the gym following a script of conventional feminin- continue to be an important player in the where he was a member. In this case, the ity by exercising in that environment. The city’s economy.9 mainstream media, including the Associ- amount of press coverage, including the Meanwhile, in the summer of 2009, ated Press and the New York Times, and pictures of the murdered women, contrasts George Sodini opened fire on a women’s local authorities were quick to recognize starkly with the few, short mentions, rarely aerobics class in Pittsburgh, killing three the gendered nature of the murders.