International Women's Day

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ment are severely limited, if not forbidden. A special police force is on hand to search people and vehicles entering or leaving the zones."

The majority of workers in these free trade zones are young women, who work on light-assembly lines. These women are usually paid $3 to $5 a day, an income that cannot provide the basic necessities for a single person, let alone for a woman trying to support her children. They are also subjected to particular forms of harassment and exploitation ranging from pregnancy tests (and being fired immediately if they are found to be pregnant), to lay-offs at age 25 (since they are past their "most productive" years), to sexist advertising attempting to attract foreign investors.

A Malaysian government investment brochure advertises: "The manual dexterity of the Oriental female is famous the world over. Her hands are small, and she works fast with extreme care... Who, therefore, could be better qualified by nature and inheritance, to contribute to the efficiency of a bench-assembly production line than the Oriental girl?"

One aspect of this new industrial work which Fuentes and Ehrenreich focus on is the health and safety hazards it 16 Socialist Action March 1984 SOJOURNER TRUTH "That man over there say that a woman needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helped me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me a best place... And ain't 1 a woman? Look at me. Look at my arm! I have plowed and planted und gathered into burns, and no man could head me... And ain't l a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man when I could get it, and bear the lash as well... And ain't I a woman? I have borned thirreen children and seen them most of all sold off into slavery. And when / cried our with a mother's grief, none but Jesus heard... And ain't I a woman?"

Sojourner Truth: Speech before the Woman's Rights Convention at Akron, Ohio, in 1851. of thse women.

Fuentes and Ehrenreich emphasize that the solution must be global, which seems absolutely correct, and talk about creating links between women around the world such as an international network to share information on hazardous substances and corporate policies. But most of their proposals are limited to suggestions of ways to counter particular abuses of multinational corporations, along the lines of the Nestle boycott.

Fuentes and Ehrenreich present a clear description of the function of governments in both underdeveloped and advanced capitalist states-especially in the United States—in underwriting this exploitative process of "development." This support ranges from economic incentives to military repression.

The struggles of Third World women for economic and political freedom must therefore involve workplace actions and strikes-many examples of which are documented in this pamphlet. But they must also attain a level of political organization that opposes capitalism and goes in a revolutionary socialist direction. This is also the only real solution for working people in the United States. Our struggles are intertwined.