Paper Topic:

women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

WOMEN : VICTIMS OF GENDER ASSAULT IN CIUDAD JUAREZ

1 .1 Introduction

Ciudad Juarez is Mexico 's fourth largest city , located on the US Mexico b conjointly with El Paso . It is colloquially known as the maquiladora capital ' with a large number of export processing factories located in the area which are mostly owned by rich businessman from the USA (Nathan , 1999 . A peculiarity of these factories is employment of large quantum of female work force , in the form of cheap labor at pay scales which are ten times below that in neighboring

USA Since 1993 , over 300 girls and women mostly between the vulnerable ages of 11 to 22 have been murdered in the area , with reports of hundreds of girls missing being received regularly . Most of these women are from very low income families thereby lacking the means to afford social and economic protection (Livingston , 2004 . Over the years varied approaches to resolve the ghastly problem of crime and grave gender injustice have been adopted , to include joint US Mexican mechanisms police , judicial and civil rights activism . The feminist movement has also been involved in bringing the case to international notice across bs , particularly through Coalition Against Violence which has been very active in this sphere . A number of arrests have been made ranging from an Egyptian chemical scientist to a gang of bus drivers and of late a Mexican cement worker in Denver USA . However these appear to be superficial in their approach to the problem and seem to be tackling the external rather than the root causes arising out of traditional gender inequity and exploitation of women in an industrial setting with poor social and security supports . There is thus scope for analyzing the issue of murder of large number of women in Ciudad Juarez from the perspective of gender assault and social preventive measures that could be taken to avoid such proliferation

1 .2 Research

The number of violent deaths of girls and women in Ciudad Juarez area transgressing on the bs with El Paso has been over 320 during the period 1993 - 2003 , with a third of these deaths denoting extensive mutilation of the bodies of the victims (Staudt . Coronado , 2003 . This issue has been engaging the attention of the people in the region since August 1993 , when the first murder of a young woman was reported on the outskirts of the city . There has been involvement of anti social elements as drug dealers , pimps as well as husbands and boy friends in these incidents . However a large number of deaths , almost one third are reported to be mysteriously unaccounted for . The involvement of a serial killer in these incidents though suspected has been frequently disputed though there are clear signs of a rape-torture-murder cycle , denoting the handiwork of such murderers , at work . The pro of the women is said to be generally poor , with dark skin and long black hair . Their bodies are frequently dumped in the desert after mutilation and the death...

12 pages

65.5 KB

Free sing-up