The Mental Health Effects of Maquiladora Work on Mexican Women:

Sources of Stress and its Consequences

By Erika Rominger

“The U.S.-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. . .”-- Gloria Anzaldua

Introduction

Submerged in the impoverished urban border culture which they helped create, the maquiladoras draw young women north from all over Mexico’s interior. The women migrate with hopes of acquiring jobs in the booming foreign-owned factories and are plunged into a new border “country” that is far from a promised land. Maquiladoras are a financial endeavor for foreign industrialists who hope that by situating factories in Third World countries they will substantially cut production costs. The industrialists have been accused of taking advantage of Mexico’s cheaply accessible labor force and less restrictive health and safety codes in order to achieve these lower production costs. While preliminary surveys on the effects of maquiladora work on women’s physical health show little to no adverse side effects, researchers and advocates are not completely convinced that long term health effects will prove positive.

The emotional and psychological stresses of working in a maquiladora are tremendous and should be examined just as seriously as the physical effects. The female workers live a life of insecurity, instability, oppression, submission, and exhaustion. They face jolting lifestyle changes and even when working full time, have trouble making enough money to cover basic living costs. They are pawns in a First World economic strategy that hopes to wring as much cheap labor out of the women as it can, paying female workers in Mexico’s northern states an average of only four dollars a day for workdays that typically run from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.. High levels of stress accountable to both working in the maquiladora itself and the to lifestyle it promotes attribute to depression, substance abuse and even physically manifested ailments. This paper will examine the different sources of stress that affect the mental health of female maquiladora workers in an attempt to understand the overall health issues of the border culture.

Overview of Potential Stressors Affecting Mental Health

A great majority of maquiladora employees are young women who have migrated to the border area from “supporting agricultural [regions]” (Cravey, 6). Migration, itself, is a complicated process which could have profound affects on the mental health of maquiladora workers. Migration has been found to have negative effects on mental health because of circumstances surrounding the move, circumstances of the actual passage, trouble adapting to the new culture, breaks in the migrant’s support system of friends and family, and disappointed expectations of social and economic acquisition. Migration may be involuntary and unexpected with insufficient preparation time, abruptly shocking the migrants out of their familiar lifestyles before they are emotionally ready for the change. This abrupt and unwanted departure induces despair, feelings of loss, and loneliness. The passage can vary in terms of hardship; those traveling across the border may encounter journeys “filled with physical dangers that include gross deprivation, rape, murder [and therefore]. . .could have serious psychiatric repercussions” (Vega1, 515). Once the migrant has arrived at their destination, she is faced with the struggle of adapting to the new socioeconomic environment. The migrant must immediately obtain housing and employment in a border area which has little to offer of either. The task of adapting socially and economically to the new environment is emotionally taxing on the newcomer, leaving her feeling anxious, frightened, and isolated (Vega1, 514-517).

Perhaps the greatest detriment to the mental health of migrant maquiladora workers is the severing of interpersonal relationships. In his study on the health effects of migration, Vega found that “early access to family support among immigrant women is the key factor for optimizing successful personal adaptation after immigration. . .and that contact with the family of origin is the most important source of emotional support” (Vega2, 161). It has been found that support systems in general (including friends as well as family) are a necessary component to stable mental health. Migrants who have been recently displaced have yet to re-form supportive social relationships, and distance and lack of financial resources make communication and visitation with their root families extremely difficult. The migrant is left virtually alone in a unfamiliar, chaotic environment, feeling isolated, alienated, and lonely (Bruhn, 53-54). Also, because the average age of inhabitants in the border area is much younger that in non-border areas, the “stabilizing societal effects from older family members are less present” (Bruhn, 52). Young women who are most likely not emotionally ready to fend for themselves in the urbanized border area are left alone in a whirlwind of confusion, instability, anxiety, and loneliness that seriously contribute to depressive symptoms.

Frustrated expectations also act as stressors that have a negative impact on mental health of migrant workers. Migrants leave their “[homelands] in the hope of realizing a higher standard of material well-being elsewhere” only to find that they can barely earn enough money to support basic costs of living (Vega1, 516). The border area is far from an urban utopia: housing is so sparse that many migrant women are forced to live in squatter communities that have no running water or electricity. The poverty is overwhelming and many migrant workers find themselves plunged into the very financial dilemma they hoped to avoid by moving north. Vega found that “for those whose ambitions are frustrated, personal pathology (‘retreatism’) is one possible outcome. Since migrants are often blocked by lack of necessary resources or de facto barriers from attaining goals, they may be more likely . . .to have unfulfilled aspirations resulting in stressful outcomes such as mental illness” (Vega1, 516). In a study conducted by Guendelman, it was found that maquiladora workers were far less likely to own a car or a telephone than service employees and housewives (Guendelman, 39); the inability to obtain these resources only further frustrates the maquiladora worker’s lack of mobility and inability to communicate with her primary family, further alienating her from support systems that may buffer depression and psychological disorders.

Once a woman has secured employment within a maquiladora, she may be exposed to a whole new array of stressors that adversely affect her mental health. Exhaustion as a stress inducing factor is a primary concern among researchers. Workdays are frequently prolonged beyond the eight hours sanctioned by the Mexican government. In a survey of Nogales maquiladoras, the average workday was found to be ten and a half hours (Cravey, 96). Unfortunately, the women are forced to work double workdays as the absence of family support systems makes the task of child care impossibly troublesome. While some maquiladoras are beginning to offer child care, they are few and far between. In the meantime, the responsibility settles on children and the already exhausted women (Cravey, 93). Also, the lack of viable jobs for men in the border area makes many female maquiladora employees the primary financial source for the family (Hovell, 619). If the job at the maquiladora is lost, the family would be in a dire situation--this adds to the women’s feeling and anxiety and fear all the more.

The environment inside the maquiladora further grates on the women’s mental capacity for balance. The women are subjected to the continual droning noise of heavy machinery (which often induces headaches) while they repeat the same minuscule task thousands of times a day without variety. In an interview with a maquiladora worker, Prieto gleaned a depressing picture of the environment inside the workplace: “The plants don’t have any windows. It’s just walls on all sides, so the lights and ventilation are artificial. In winter it gets dark very early, so we enter and leave work in darkness; we go for days without seeing the sun” (Prieto, 20). The women are treated like tireless worker bees at the maquiladora, only to go home and be forced to pick up the pieces of families who need every ounce of energy and emotional support they have left. The maquiladora worker’s life becomes completely about working--whether it is in the factory or in the home. Guendelman found that there is no time or leisure money left for preventative health practices that could greatly balance out the stress load the women feel. The women surveyed in Guendelman’s test were extremely unlikely to ever go out for recreation to “gratify themselves by buying something that they really liked” (Guendelman, 43).

To add even more stress to the women’s lives, employment within a maquiladora is notoriously short lived. “High turnover rates in the factories (often due to work related disabilities) and high rates of unemployment in the urban area guarantee the average worker only a few years of income before she is replaced” (Cravey, 6). Young women, ranging in age from 15 to 24, are optimum candidates for maquiladora work. The younger and more nimble the hands, the more suited they are for the assembly of tiny parts. Unfortunately, by the time a women enters her mid-twenties, she is becoming less valuable to the factory. Besides the job instability associated with getting older, maquiladoras are infamous for blacklisting and firing employees for the tiniest mistake (Brown, 139). “One can be dismissed over any misunderstanding, punished for a delay of seconds or an impatient word to the line boss. . .so much anxiety and fatigue just to earn minimum wage, whose effective buying power shrinks year by year” (Prieto, 24). Workers are intimidated into silence by the threat of losing their desperately needed jobs. They give up on exercising their rights and allow abusive language, excessive hours, and potentially hazardous situations. The women live in fear of not meeting their quotas, which are sometimes pushed so impossibly high that workers have no of chance of meeting them-- giving management an easy scapegoat for dismissing workers.

The managerial organization of maquiladoras relies on the female employees to be submissive in order to maintain maximum efficiency. Labor discipline “takes advantage of existing gender hierarchies. . .[using] male floor managers alongside female workers” (Cravey, 7). Because Mexican women have been passive to machismo for generations, placing males in supervisory roles guarantees cooperation. Women are deprived of their voices due to socialization, increasing their feelings of lack of control and autonomy over their jobs and lives. They are treated like drones, losing their identities. Sexual harassment is the natural offshoot from this system of gender dominance, leaving the women vulnerable and fearful of denying their supervisors’s requests. “For instance, Pena reports that in Mexican maquiladoras, women who socialize with their supervisors (i.e., waged concubines) are rewarded while those who refuse are ostracized or threatened with termination (Pena, 1987)” (Cravey, 7). Another documented case involves a corporate executive from the United States forcing female employees to “parade around in bathing suits while he videotaped and kissed them” at a company picnic (Brown, 139). Female employees generally fear protesting such treatment because disrupting the established command would not only cost them their jobs but possibly get them blacklisted from future employment at other factories. The cycle of oppression continues and the emotional burden and anxiety the women bear only accelerate depression and mental illness.

Some maquiladoras have instituted a dormitory system which, while providing employees with more sanitary living conditions, may actually exacerbate poor mental health. Living in the dormitories means that the women are still under the factory’s control after they have left the workplace. The women are strictly monitored, losing autonomy over their personal lives. “The buildings themselves continue to separate the workers from the rest of the community. . .family relations are at least temporarily broken
. . .since the job is a prerequisite for the housing, the arrangement in insecure. Sickness, pregnancy, even personality conflict can result in both job and housing loss” (Cravey, 17). Emotional support systems are severed, leaving the women isolated and almost incarcerated in an unstable housing situation that could be terminated over a slight argument with a bunk mate. The employees, in order to hold on to both their source of income and shelter, must suppress emotional impulses and remain faithfully obedient--even in the face of harassment and unfair treatment. Again, they are stripped of their identities as they lose all privacy and independence. There are even cases of “sexual abuse and psychological disturbances” within the dorms, making them detrimental environments for the inhabitant’s psychological well-being (Cravey, 98).

Mental Health and the Big Picture

In attempting to understand the health concerns of women working in the maquiladoras on the U.S.-Mexico border, it is vitally important to acknowledge mental health issues. The stresses and depressions that female workers are subjected to shape more than just their psychological lives: unbalanced emotional health has a profound impact on physical health, as well. The relationship between emotional stress and physical responses in the body are undeniable. Stress triggers reactions in the physical body which may in turn induce or make the body more vulnerable to illness. In Bromet’s study on employees in a microelectronics plant, it was shown that workers experiencing “job-related conflict” and high levels of stress reported more depressive symptoms, anxiety, and minor physical ailments (such as headaches, gastro-intestinal problems, and lightheadedness) (Bromet, 1381). Interestingly, workers that had “high friend/ relative support” in situations of high job-related conflict were less likely to report the fore mentioned physical afflictions (Bromet, 1380).

Stress can open the flood gates for many illnesses, including heart disease, ulcers, asthma, headaches, hypertension, immune system disfunction, sleep and digestive disorders, arthritis, cancer, cardiac and pulmonary disorders, high blood pressure, panic attacks, increased production of insulin in diabetics--not to mention substance abuse and uncharacteristic violent behavior. It is quite possible that the tremendous amounts of emotional stress maquiladora workers endure act as a detriment to their physical health as well as their emotional health.

Considerations for the Treatment of Mental Health Problems

In understanding the mental health problems of this culture, it is important to consider the way Mexicans perceive mental health and the reasons why Mexican women are still fairly unlikely to utilize the few resources available in border area the for the treatment of mental health. “The lower class sees the natural and the supernatural blended into one functional entity. Therefore, the members of this class rely heavily on supernatural techniques to deal with illness. . .” (Bruhn, 16). Modern day, urbanized Mexicans and Mexican Americans still uphold folk beliefs and their relationship to health. Because the Mexican culture depends on supernatural explanations for health issues, traditional Western medicine cannot be offered solely as a solution to their problems. Curanderismo is the Mexican folk medicine philosophy that “combines health and illness, and diagnoses and treats illnesses within a framework that focuses on the relationship between the spiritual, physical, and mental status of the client” (Bruhn, 24). The curandero, or folk healer, employs a more holistic approach than Western medicine allows for. The curandero treats both physical and psychological ailments, but seems to more resemble a “psychiatrist than a physician” (Bruhn, 24) . Both Western doctors and curanderos come from the same vantage point when working with a client, though: society is normal and the patient is in need of adjustment. The therapy resources offered to Mexicans by American relief clinics and maquiladoras are predominately based on Western medicine. However, some American clinics have found that by installing a resident curandero to cooperate in treatment and diagnosis, attendance and success rates have shot up. It is necessary that foreign industrialists and doctors acknowledge the unique needs and perceptions of this contact zone when addressing medical problems if the border region is ever to become a place of healthy existence.

Works Cited

Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Spinsters/ Aunt Lute. San Francisco. 1997.

Bromet, Evelyn J. “Effects of Occupational Stress on the Physical and Psychological Health of Women in a Microelectronics Plant.” Soc. Sci. Med. 1992. 34, 12.

Brown, Garret. “Occupational Health and Safety Training for Maquiladora Wokers Along the U.S.-Mexico Border.” Health Without Boundaries: Proceedings of the U.S.-Mexico Border Conference on Women’s Health. September 26-28, 1995.

Bruhn, John, Ed. Border Health: Challenges for the United States and Mexico. Garland Publishing, Inc., New York, 1997.

Cravey, Altha J. Women and Work in Mexico’s Maquiladoras. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Lanham, 1998.

Guendelman, Sylvia. “The Health Consequences of Maquiladora Work: Women on the US-Mexican Border.” American Journal of Public Health. Jan. 1993. 83, 1.

Hovell, Melbourne F. “Occupational Health Risks for the Mexican Woman: The Case of the Maquiladora Along the Mexican-United States Border.” International Journal of Health Services. 1988. 18, 4.

Prieto, Norma Iglesias. Beautiful Flowers of the Maquiladora: Life Histories of Women Workers in Tijuana. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Vega1, Willian A. “Migration and Mental Health: An Empirical Test of Depression Risk Factors Among Immigrant Mexican Women.” International Migration Review. Fall 1987. 21, 3.

Vega2, William A. “Social Networks, Social Support, and their Relationship to Depression among Immigrant Mexican Women.” Human Organization. 1991. 50, 2.

Top of Page