What is the impact of agricultural liberalization specifically on women?
Mittal: Women and children are the worst affected. As they and their families are thrown off the land, they form the labor pool for sweatshops. For example, since the passage of NAFTA in 1994, Mexico is home to over 2,700 maquiladoras (assembly sweatshops producing for export) — employing over 1.3 million Mexican workers, mostly young women, who are paid on average 50 cents an hour, have no job security or benefits, and are often subject to sexual harassment and unsafe working conditions. Sex trafficking has increased, finding a real home in the global economy. MM: What happens to farmers who are displaced by these policies? Mittal: We can go through numbers of farmers displaced from their land. But numbers numb us. Each one displaced has an individual story — A farmer selling a kidney to make ends meet in India. Or a family from Mexico, attempting to come to the U.S. only to find death or incarceration at the border, a job in a sweatshop, or slavery in the fields of California or Fl
