An expose in the New York Times earlier this summer revealed the horrifying reality that hundreds of immigrant Asian and Latina women endure each day as forced laborers in some of New York’s nail salons.  Many of these women make well below the minimum wage and some don’t get paid at all.  The article explained that many of the women are trafficked from overseas and forced to work in debilitating conditions with barely enough money to survive.  Are you surprised though? How can “employees” possibly be making even minimum wage off of the $19.99 mani/pedi that is advertised in many salon windows? Thousands of women and especially immigrant women or women of color are trafficked either within the United States or brought in from abroad to perform multiple forms of exploitative labor for little or no pay.  The average age that a girl is trafficked is just twelve years old. At Legal Momentum last week, we attended a seminar in which we learned about the shocking prevalence of human trafficking within the country and especially in the New York area.

On the hood of nearly every taxi (and trust me taxis are all over New York), there is an advertisement for a strip club.  We never stop to think that the women on these advertisements may actually be victims of trafficking and forced to perform degrading and physically damaging sexual acts.  Many clubs, massage parlors, and escort services have workforces of trafficked girls.  While New York may be progressive in addressing human trafficking, even passing a law in 2007 which treated traffickers as felons, other states, not so much. In fact, in several jurisdictions, judges will actually refer to girls, some even younger than twelve years old, who have been coerced into performing horrific sexual acts, as “prostitutes” and even criminalize their behavior.

Although trafficked women are arguably subjected to the most exploitative and dangerous forms of labor, millions of women across the globe work in conditions that are, in some cases, just as bad.   As a result of globalization, poor women and especially women of color are forced to labor at factories on their feet for sometimes eighteen hours a day. Many of these women are deceived into thinking that factory work will be their gateway to freedom and mobility outside the home, but instead find that they are indebted to their employers and forced to work until they suffer from life-crippling health conditions.

Being in New York, its hard not to do a little retail therapy and living right next to Fifth Avenue is extremely dangerous, especially given the fact that we live two blocks away from a two-story Forever 21…

Browsing through the stacks and piles of tank-tops, sweaters, jeans, and dresses, I do not even register the massive amount of labor that went into producing each article of clothing. The cheap, disposability of the clothes completely contrasts with the long, back-breaking hours that women spend manufacturing them.  We have distanced ourselves quite literally (the women making these clothes are thousands of miles away) from the exploitation that goes into creating that $10 t-shirt, so that we can shop without any moral reservations and continue to feed this system of excessive consumption.

It is unfair to just blame Forever 21 for contributing to the exploitation of women overseas, now every time I use my iPhone to navigate the city, bend down to tie my shoes, or throwaway an empty coffee cup, I realize that I am benefitting from another woman’s exploitation. How many hours were spent making my shoes? And why did I pay $50 for a pair of sneakers when the women making them were paid less than two dollars for the entire day? How many fumes did the women working at plastic factories inhale just to create cups to supply my coffee habit?  Most women in technology factories lose their eyesight at age twenty-five from spending fourteen hours a day staring through a microscope connecting wires for microchips. These microchips will only be broken, lost, or disposed of within a few months since we constantly damage or upgrade our technological devices. Cheap, exploitative labor is so entrenched into our nation’s economy that we do not even realize the horrific consequences to our excessive consumption and instead turn a blind eye to the working conditions behind that “made in china” or “made in mexico” label.

During the industrial revolution in America, immigrant women received minimal pay and were responsible for laboring in dangerous sweatshops for long hours.  The tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York demonstrates the terrible working conditions that were a daily reality for most women. And before the turn of 19th century, enslaved women were responsible for creating garments. Our nation has always relied upon cheap labor and exploitative practices to fuel our economy.  Today, we simply export that labor overseas and traffik individuals illegally to provide goods and services.  Stopping the age-old practice of cheap, exploitative labor will require extensive and dramatic shifts in policy. Since both witnessing and experiencing the massive consumer culture present in New York, I am struggling to come to terms with the fact that I may never fully be able to escape contributing to another woman’s exploitation.