Response to Rachel's Post

The United States can be hypocritical and hardly practice what they preach which is clearly seen through the exploitation of the sneaker companies such as Reebok and Nike on women specifically. These companies celebrate the image of of the “globalized girl-athlete in their advertisements” (68) and promote “the notion of women-as-citizen into those countries where their companies produce products” (68) while at the same exercising the complete opposite when using the oppression of women in other countries to their advantage by continuing to exploit cheap labor. It was interesting how Cynthia Enloe interconnected the industry tactics with the beliefs of culture that helped to enforce the company’s success. Nike and Reebok thrived upon the belief that most Asian women had in regards to “being a good daughter” and dowry practices which made them less likely to revolt. Fortunately many of the women especially in South Korea were able to take themselves seriously as citizens and fight for better working conditions and wages. Although in response to this movement of female empowerment and being able to achieve better wages, led many of the sneaker companies to move their factories else where to other underdeveloped countries in Asia. Women in South Korea were making strides toward an industrialized nation in which their concerns were also taken into account, but as a result many lost their jobs do to their unionizing against the sneaker companies. Still women in most of these countries are the underdog and continue to make up most of the poverty population in countries like China in which the wages for women to men are highly disproportionate. When looking at the chart of page 54, I was completely shocked to see how women were only getting paid $.10-.14 an hour in China at these sneaker factories. Most of us view the moralistic factor of this exploitation, but when it comes to affecting us personally many of us will try our best to avoid knowing the facts on how most of the products that we buy are made because we enjoy the low prices. The United States continues to be a selfish society and most likely very little will be done to change these sneaker companies’ tactics which is disappointing.