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The video we watched on Monday did a great job of showing how large the issue is that the people of Bangladesh are facing. I’ve learned about this before in other classes and have heard how poor their working conditions are and how they struggle to survive on their wages, let alone keep their families healthy, but I think that it is always a good thing to be reminded of just how unjustly so many people are treated.

The question always remains what can be done to reverse this trend. It’s a difficult question, but I liked that the film mentioned that the people working in these shops are not mad at the consumers, they are mad at the companies. The workers do not want the U.S. companies to leave, but they want and need their basic human rights to be respected. It’s impossible to imagine what it must be like to be denied the basic human rights and I think many times that is taken for granted here. The labor unions and labor laws that have been established in this country ensure us that we will be able to survive on the minimum wage, even if it is difficult at times.

The majority of workers in these shops/factories are women. This addresses the issue of gender roles and stereotypes. Situations such as this perpetuate the negative identities of both the males and females of this culture. The male supervisors abuse, harass and punish the female workers for not working fast or hard enough. This dominant and abusive stereotype of males will never be changed if these inhumane situation and treatment continues. The stereotype of women being submissive and vulnerable is also perpetuated by this situation. I found it most interesting that you must challenge yourself to look at the whole context of a culture to understand why there are certain stereotypes and gender roles. Everything is influenced by something else and it takes understanding things such as the economic situation and issues of a culture to truly ‘demistify’ and change or challenge a situation such as that in Bangladesh.