Reflections from the field - Women and Colombia's Cut Flower Industry

Maria lives in a small house made of cinder blocks on a hillside just outside of Facatativá, one of Colombia’s flower producing towns in the Bogota Savannah. For many, the stunning views are the stuff of envy – but enjoying the vista is the last thing on Maria´s mind. She lives alone with her 12 year-old son, who suffers from a heart condition that requires frequent visits with doctors in the capital, a four hour round trip for which she has to miss work and scrounge to cover the cost. Maria tells us about her work in the flower sector for 6 years. She says repeatedly throughout the interview “el trabajo en las flores es pesado, muy pesado” (work in flowers is tough work, very tough).

In 2010, after 6 years working for the same company, she was fired. They told her that the reason for her dismissal was that her contact was over. The truth is, as Maria puts it, that like many other flower workers who become sick or suffer debilitating injuries from the grueling work, she was fired because of her health problem. “We are like machines,” said one of the flower workers I interviewed. Like machines is how the employers treat them; employers simply recycle the workers for newer ones when they are no longer useful to the company (because of health problems, age, association with unions, etc.).

In the Bogota Savannah, there aren’t many job opportunities for women, especially for those who only have an elementary school education. The flower industry provides thousands of jobs to women in the Savannah (70% of the 100,000 workers are women). That’s great, right? Well, it turns out it’s more complicated than that.

Increasing the number of women in the workforce is part of the plan for the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals for 2015. It falls under the rubric of promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment (Goal #3).  Indeed, there has been an increase of women in the global workforce over the past few decades as free market ideology and neo-liberal trade policy spread and drive export-oriented industries. Women dominate the workforce in many export-oriented sectors. Unfortunately, these industries are where horrifying stories like hundreds trapped in sweatshop fires and child labor come from.

Many of the women I have interviewed told me that their job in the cut flower industry allows them to buy food for their children, and if they are lucky, they can buy school supplies and save some for their children’s’ future (so that hopefully they don’t have to work in the cut flower sector). Some argue that the comradery with other women workers provides a space for social change and dialogue outside of the home and that women who aren’t dependent on their spouses or parents for financial support are more autonomous in decisions about marriage and having children. Therefore, in spite of the exploitation in the workplace, wage labor jobs do contribute to social change and gender equality.

Sure, it can be concluded, as many women have concluded, that life is better than it was before having a job, or that life is better than what their moms had to endure. Perhaps that is a step toward women’s empowerment and gender equality, but I am not entirely convinced.

Maria is the poster child for what happens to women in Colombia’s cut-flower industry. She worked for six hard years waking up at 4 a.m. so that she could make lunch for her children and be at work by 6 a.m., then go home, make dinner and do chores (the "double shift" or "double burden" of women in the workforce who cannot afford a nanny or maid). Her work philosophy was to cut as many flowers per hour as she physically could, so that she might be rewarded.

Maria’s reward for working so hard: a letter of renunciation from her employer and chronic problems with her hands. She won’t be able to find work because no employer will hire her with disabled hands. She never saw a penny more than minimum wage (which is barely enough to live on even by rural Colombian standards). During the high season - gringo holidays such as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day - she worked upwards of 20 hours per day. “We may as well sleep there,” said one worker when I asked about working during the high season.

Maria’s story doesn’t end tragically like many do. She found an organization in Facatativa called La Casa de Los Trabajadores y Las Trabajadoras de Las Flores (The house of workers of flowers) where she got help from a lawyer fighting for her right to be reintegrated back to work and for financial coverage of her work-related health problems. But her reintegration comes with persecution from other workers and her employer. In the flower industry unionizing or standing up for labor rights is a risky proposition. It results in getting “black-listed.“ Being a woman, head-of-household is especially risky when their children’s survival hinges solely on them.