Women working on Latin American banana plantations experience a multiple burden of discrimination. A disproportionate number of women are sacked or laid off, maternity benefits are poor or non-existent and they earn lower wages.  This is having severe impact on the livelihoods of the women, most of whom come from female-headed households.

The 'race to the bottom' in the banana industry has contributed to a significant decrease in the number of women working in the Latin American banana industry as banana companies are replacing women packing house workers with men. In the last 10-15 years the number of Latin American women banana workers has dropped from 25% to 10% in some countries. This is in part because employers are unwilling to provide proper maternity benefits and percive women as 'high cost, high risk' employees. In Costa Rica women have to produce medical certificates to prove they are not pregnant before they are offered employment. 

Wages

Daily salaries for women packing house workers vary dramatically between countries from $1 - $10 (Nicaragua and Colombia respectively).  Within countries with unions, men and women are paid the same for the same work. However, in countries with low levels of unionisation (e.g. Ecuador), men working in the packing houses earn 3-4 times what the women earn. '60% of field tasks essential to the viability of the industry are done by women yet they collectively earn less than half of the wages’.

Conditions of work for women are also having wider impacts on the family because, as stated at the second International Banana Conference (IBC2), ‘60% of female banana workers are single mothers and breadwinners in the home.’

Jobs on the plantation

Men and women have clear gender-specific work tasks in banana production on the banana plantations of Latin America. Men work in the plantations, performing tasks including weed control, control of pests, irrigation and drainage management, fumigation and crop spraying, leaf removal and shoring up of banana plants. Women are usually employed in the packing houses, cutting the banana stems into clumps, washing, applying post-harvest chemicals, quality-selecting, labelling, and packing the bananas. Men are also employed in the packing houses, but the jobs tend to still be gender-specific doing the ‘heavier’ tasks of cutting the bananas off the big stem and moving the packed boxes into containers for shipping.

Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment is commonplace and justified by some banana producers as ‘part of their culture’. Simon Cañarte of the National Banana Producers Association stated that “sexual harassment by supervisors is understandable because of the culture that supervisors live in” According to Iris Munguía, Coordinator of the Women’s Secretariat of the Latin American Coordination of Banana Workers’ Unions (COLSIBA), ‘women are often forced to sleep with their supervisor to secure a permanent job - if they don’t, they lose their job.’ COLSIBA is campaigning to end this bribery of women with the ‘sex for job’ exchange and for all banana companies to accept their responsibility to challenge discrimination and harassment.

Doris Calvo first started working on the plantations when she was 13.  At 14 her boss sexually harassed her as he was driving her to work.   She threw herself out of the car and escaped covered in mud.   The day after, she was fired.   Unfortunately her case is nothing unusual as harassment and discriminatory measures against women are common.

In Latin America, banana workers’ trade unions are working to ensure the specific problems facing women in the industry are addressed and that the rights of women are respected both in the workplace and within the trade union movement.

The Windward Islands

More than 30% of the Windward Island banana farmers involved in Fairtrade production are women, with women holding the positions of the Chair of the WINFA Board and chairs of local Fairtrade committees. Women farmers will undertake all aspects of production from planting to harvesting and packing. As in Latin America, many women are wingle heads of households.  Fairtrade is creating an environmentally sustainable agricultural system that is an example of how alternative trade can work; including and benefiting women.

Resources Available

Campaign leaflet: Women in the Banana Industry  Banana Link, 2006

Bananeras: Women transforming banana unions by Dana Frank.
Over the past 20 years, ‘mujeres bananeras’ have organised themselves, and together with their male allies, are gaining increasing control over their unions, their workplaces and their lives. Their successes overturn the popular image of the Latin American women workers as passive bystanders and offer a new model for international labour solidarity. (£8.50 incl. p&p)

Further Reading

Action Aid: Who Pays? How British supermarkets are keeping women workers in poverty ActionAid April 2007 (contains a section about the negative impacts of supermarket buying practices on banana workers in Costa Rica)

Corporate Social Responsibility in Latin America, Chiquita, Women Banana Workers and Structural Inequalities by Marina Prieto-Carron, 2006

In Women’s Words: Sexual Harassment on the Banana Plantations CAWN News 19 Spring 2005

Women in the Windward Islands by Senator Josephine Dublin-Price, Association of Caribbean Farmers (WINFA), 2005

For the Respect of Labour and Social Rights of Women Banana Workers in Latin America by Iris Munguia Figueroa, COLSIBA, 2005

Website

Central America Women's Network

Labour Start: Women Worker's Issues on Labour Start