Cane Workers viewed through GAD

            Towards the end of the class discussion on masculinity within Gender and Development, one question stuck in my mind based on various things that were said by Dr. Whitson and classmates. As the issues of men in development were being discussed, especially the inclusion of men in gender initiatives, it was said in some way or form that inclusion of men is not always necessary, that obviously both men and women are affected by development issues, however in many if not most cases, women often experience two negative impacts of economic underdevelopment and unequal gender relations. This implies that while men may experience negative effects of development and underdevelopment, women are almost always going to experience them worse. (I apologize for this poor paraphrasing. It is just my best recollection and any diminishing of the points made are my fault alone). This had me thinking after class whether in all problems related to international development women suffer worse for being victims of the problem and being women on top of it or if there existed any situation where that was not the case.

            The video that we watched in class also influenced my thinking. The idea that men, or at least those that desire to reaffirm masculine domination of any discourse, often try to shut down those who bring up cases of women’s issues by either calling them advocates of special interests that want everything to be biased towards women, or using other bullying tactics. I am sure that the idea of finding a case where men suffer from an issue more than women for being men would be fuel for those who wish to dominate the discourse to prevent change in how gender issues are dealt with in a society. However, when I realized the case that came to mind of a situation in development where men suffer and are exploited more than women due to their being men, it shouldn’t necessarily be seen as contrarian if one does not follow the dualistic framework that may often be assumed; that men’s suffering is due to the benefit of women as if women suffer it is due to the benefit or assertion of power and dominance of men. However, the case that I present below does not follow this dualistic paradigm. Instead men, by being men, qualify to work under conditions deemed unsuitable for women. However the men are made to work often by men, both in the forms of their families and the owners of the companies, who are predominately men.

            The community that I worked and lived in during my two years in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua was situated adjacent to large areas of sugar cane production. Known as ingenios, these areas consisted of hundreds of hectares of flat land planted with sugar cane and a processing center. In the community I lived in, similar to most all other rural communities in the area, most young adult males from age 18 to 40 worked in the ingenios during the cutting season. Buses would pass through the communities in the morning to pick up the workers and they would come back late in the afternoon, after working all day under the oppressive sun, completely covered in ash from the burnt sugar cane. It was interesting that women could work in the ingenio but only in jobs that were considered appropriate or safe for women. These jobs included the planting of sugar cane and the maintenance of the seedling areas. However, they could not work in the actual cutting of sugar cane. The young men who worked in the sugar cane would do so either to support the agricultural activities of their parents, or if they had families of their own, to maintain their own families through a low but regular salary to cover costs and support agricultural activities of their own (planting of basic grains) during the rainy season.

            Although they were able to maintain direct and extended families through their work in the sugar cane, they were often overburden and isolated socially from their work in comparison to the women of their age. There were high incidences of alcohol abuse and violence after parties that occurred after payday, especially in nearby communities that had less of a tradition as independent communities. During my work, I found myself working with younger women, some of whom were spouses of sugarcane workers, along with older (40-55) men in many projects such as a community bank we established while the people working in the sugar cane I found to be the least accessible. This process of rapid mental aging and reflexive outlooks toward life were exacerbated by the high incidences of creatinal kidney failure amongst sugar cane workers. This would leave the effected workers invalid, and since the ingenio would test for the condition before offering contracts, unemployable. Fundacion La Isla is a group that works with sugar cane workers affected by the disease http://laislafoundation.org/

            It is hard for me to see that the social situation of the male sugarcane workers is enviable in comparison to that of the women of the same age in the communities. While the men may have established jobs with “regular” salaries, the burden placed on them to be bread winners first by their parents, and then by their own families, they have to live through unenviable working conditions where little gratitude is given, and if one becomes sick with a potentially lifelong and degenerating disease, they are at most given a small pension and made unemployable and invalid for the rest of their lives. While some with this condition try to make it as small farmers, others migrate to El Salvador where there are fewer regulations, while some descend into alcoholism, which exacerbates the kidney problems, often causing early death. In comparison, the women in the communities, depending on their personalities, are often more economically agile, and with support of the state, many of them finish their high school degrees and have more opportunities for employment or establishing small businesses since they live relatively close to urban centers. In much of the literature we read on masculinity in development, Southern men were often portrayed as modern day Okonkwos (from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart), who are unsettled by the changes they see happening in their society, especially with regards to gender relations, and this unsettlement explains such behavior as alcoholism and spousal abuse. In White’s article, while she recognizes that depictions of men being abusive and spending wages on vices while women work at home are problematic stereotypes in development literature, she depicts a Filipino male as asserting that as the male of the household he was the only breadwinner as a sort of “traditional” belief rather than one that is developed through their experiences and economic conditions (14-15). However, this type of cultural affirmation does little to show how these roles and expectations as breadwinners are developed, how burdensome the can be, and how they can influence unequal gender relations and community and familiar problems involving men such as alcoholism and domestic violence. Cases like those of the cane workers should show that this unsettlement is explained not by gender relations or changing cultural norms alone, but the physical and mental burden placed on these groups of men. These cases shouldn’t be used to say that women don’t have it so bad, but rather to join gender and economic geographical analysis of international development so that men’s situation in communities is better understood, and therefore can be better incorporated in gender and development initiatives.