Women Behaving Courageously: Understanding Paternalism
‘The women’s suffrage movement is only the small edge of the wedge, if we allow women to vote it will mean the loss of social structure and the rise of every liberal cause under the sun. Women are well represented by their fathers, brothers and husbands.’ Sir Winston Churchill
Yes, he really said that!
The word paternalism is from the Latin pater meaning ‘father’, and paternus meaning ‘fatherly’. It wasn’t until the late 19th century that the term ‘paternalism’ appeared in our language. I never knew my father.
My grandfather was my male role model. He was an absolute angel. He taught me every plant, every tree, every bird, he even taught me how to knit! He was the kind version of paternalism. He wanted nothing but the best for me, was always there for me and I don’t think I ever heard him raise his voice. Exactly what any child would want from a parent — male or female.
If we go back in time to the days where humans lived in caves, men hunted for food, women looked after children and cooked the food. Even after leaving cave dwelling for more civilised dwellings, men were still the breadwinners; women traditionally stayed home with their parents until they married, then, once married, their life became one of having babies, looking after children and being the home-maker.
It wasn’t unusual for women to have a baby every year until they either died of exhaustion or simply stopped being able to have children. It wasn’t unusual for families to have anything from six to 15 children in Victorian times; partly due to lack of reliable and safe birth control but also because prior to the introduction of a social welfare system, children were an economic asset to poorer families.
Once they were of working age and could bring home a wage, children had to contribute to the family coffers. In those poor families, children would be sent out to work as soon as they were able to run an errand or use a broom. Industrialisation created a massive gap for workers. Factory owners didn’t much care what age people were as long as they could do a job. It wasn’t unusual for children as young as eight to work in factories and mines. Chimney sweeps were usually small boys who could climb up the inside of a chimney, cleaning the soot as they went! In factories they were useful at fetching and carrying between spinning or weaving machines; in coal mines children were especially valued because they could crawl into much smaller areas to reach small veins of coal, spaces grown men couldn’t reach. Imagine the terror of that for a child.
Caring Victorians were horrified at this exploitation of children, and the Factory Act (1833) prohibited children younger than nine to be employed. It also limited the number of hours children between nine and 13 could work. The Mines Act (1842) raised the starting age of colliery workers to 10 years.
Britain ended the exploitation of children, yet today we still see countries doing to their children what was found to be repugnant in the mid 1800s.
How paternalism and child labour are linked. In Somalia 76% of children five to 14 are child labourers. They are employed in the fishing sector, agriculture, construction and mining. They are also seen begging and hawking. All of this is horrific enough, but they are also trained as soldiers and are actually engaged in real conflicts.
Child trafficking is not uncommon. In Pakistan some 13% of children aged 10 to 14 are child labourers, the vast majority working in fishing and agriculture but also on tea stalls and, sadly, in garbage scavenging.
The glass jewellery industry, carpet weaving, coal mining, the brick kiln sector and even the auto industry employ children. India has an estimated 33 million child labourers. Despite India’s economy growing rapidly, the wealth hasn’t flowed down to the poorest families.
The use of child labour, far from decreasing, has actually increased over recent years. In Nigeria it is estimated that over 15 million children below the age of 14 work in similar industries to those in Pakistan and India.
Girls enter the workforce earlier than boys, mostly in domestic work. And, of course, when children are working they are not being educated. So countries perpetuate the problem — large families tend to be poor families and just as the early Victorian families discovered, children become a source of revenue and the practice perpetuates the cycle of poor education and poverty.
Shame on the corporates which still use child labour.
?Nestlé: Terry Collingsworth, a human rights lawyer, filed a lawsuit in October 2018 taking the organisation to task for its continued use of child labour. Another human rights activist, Danell Tomasella, has taken a separate class action suit against them — she believes they are lying to consumers by failing to disclose continued use of child labour. Their excuse is that their profits would be affected and how else could they return shareholder investment?!
H&M have faced allegations of neglect to worker rights throughout their various factories. Reports suggest that they continue to use child labour in factories in Myanmar, Bangladesh and Cambodia, paying as little as 13 pence per hour. Despite a massive drop in profits in 2018 because of the use of child labour, they keep going with the practice using as their excuse that the legal working age in Myanmar is 14.
领英推荐
Philip Morris. In 2010 the company actually admitted that children as young as 10 had been forced into working on their tobacco farms in Kazakhstan. As if that wasn’t shameful enough, they have a practice of taking passports off families so they can’t escape the farms. Even in 2018 a Guardian investigation discovered that children working on their farms in Malawi ‘is rampant’.
Microsoft. Triple shame on this company because despite their reputation as being a top employer and the Gates Foundation being so philanthropic, it was discovered that in 2018 children as young as seven were being used in the Democratic Republic of Congo to extract cobalt for up to 12 hours per day. Cobalt is toxic! Once found out, they moved quickly to address the issue, but Amnesty International remains sceptical, stating that there is still a long way to go before they fully redeem themselves.
Apple has a reputation of being one of the most innovative brands on the planet, but they too have been found to use schoolchildren to make their iPhone X.
New Look is also involved in child labour practices in Myanmar. They apparently have at least agreed this is unacceptable and to work with suppliers and partners to address the use of children. They have implemented a remediation programme where underage children are removed from factories and returned to school. They still have to address the issue of the raw cotton they use for their clothing, which is sourced in Uzbekistan and uses child labour — their rationale is that sourcing the cotton is their contractors’ responsibility, not theirs!
Hershey’s, like Nestlé, are facing legal action. Claims are they repeatedly abandon any serious attempt to address the issue of child labour in the production of their Hershey’s Kisses, Kit Kat, Peppermint Patties and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
We can help these children by boycotting all the products mentioned above and by letting our friends on social media know what we are doing and why. There is nothing that brings a company to heel more than being named and shamed and nothing wakes up shareholders faster than a fall in their dividends.
‘Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labour of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time.’ Grace Abbott
If you are a woman OR man reading this and want to know more about my 25 Female Warriors and how you can help shame such companies into doing the right thing by NOT exploiting poorer countries and their children, then grab a free electronic copy of the book?right here
Ann Andrews, CSP. Author, speaker, profiler, Life Member PSANZ
Author of:
Women Behaving Courageously:?How gutsy women, young and old, are transforming the world