Working With Your Rapist as Your Supervisor? The Widespread Sexual Abuse of Women in Farm Work

There aren’t many jobs in the U.S. that are tougher than farmwork–spending the day picking crops under a sweltering sun, earning just enough to survive, jumping from one unstable seasonal job to another. But the job is especially unbearable if you have to work yourself to exhaustion all day under the watch of the man who raped you.

There have over the years been numerous reports of widespread sexual abuse of women farmworkers–everything from being called demeaning names by supervisors to brutal sexual assault. Many of the victims suffer in silence, cut off from law enforcement and social services and fearful of losing their jobs if they come forward to authorities, according to a report on sexual violence in agricultural work by Human Rights Watch.

The report, based on dozens of interviews with survivors and advocates, outlines the multiple barriers to justice that women face–not just institutional sexism but also crippling poverty and discrimination in law enforcement. Women may feel they have little choice but to suffer humiliating treatment and abuse in order to support their families. The consequences of reporting sexual violence can be devastating for the whole household, because the boss might fire both the victim and the family members who work alongside her. Read the rest of this entry →

Two Years After Haiti’s Earthquake, Women Are Still Shattered by Sexual Exploitation

10:04 am in Uncategorized by Michelle Chen

Every morning Marie Josée prays with her colleagues before starting their work at around 6.30am. Photo: Sophia Paris/UNDP via flickr

Cross-posted from The Nation

It’s been two years since hell paid Haiti a visit, but for countless women, terror still stalks the ruins. The scars of the January 2010 earthquake are etched on their bodies, in an ever-widening pattern of sexual exploitation.

A crisis of gender-based violence and exploitation is festering–and foreign aid efforts are still failing to protect survivor communities from harm, or to make the criminal justice system more accountable.

Sexual violence and women’s oppression in Haiti predated the disaster. Prior to the quake, surveys showed that gender-based and sexual violence was widespread, and women and children had long bore the brunt of poverty stoked by neoliberal economic policies and political instability. But post-quake conditions have posed unique threats to survivor communities: the lack of safety patrols in camps, the breakdown of an already tattered government structure, and the erosion of social networks that leave women at greater risk. In a recent study of conditions surrounding four internally displaced people’s camps, researchers with the Global Justice Center and Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) estimate that “14 percent of households reported that at least one member of the household had been a victim of sexual violence since the earthquake.” Victims were typically young, female, and deprived of access to food, water and sanitation. Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: gender, Haiti, human rights, rape, sexual assault, United Nations, violence, women
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