Resistance:Equal Pay for Farmworker Women | National Farmworker Awareness Week

Farmworker Justice is honored to host guest blogger Mónica Ramírez for today's post. Mónica serves as the Director of Gender Equity and Advocacy at National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA) and the Director of Gender Equality for the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA).

Today, more than 600,000 women make up the agricultural workforce.  They toil countless hours in agricultural fields, packing houses, and nurseries scattered across our nation. Though their work is extremely important and critical to our sustenance and the well-being of our economy, most people do not realize that such a large number of women are responsible for this work. Women’s History Month provides us with an opportunity to reflect on their many contributions. It is also a chance to consider how we can best join them in their efforts to resist anti-worker, anti-women, and anti-immigrant campaigns that harm them, their families, their interests, and our entire country.  

For decades, farmworker women leaders, like Mily Treviño Sauceda, Suguet Lopez, Ana Laura Bolaños, and many others, have been organizing to address the many issues that affect them, such as unequal pay, widespread sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, exposure to harmful chemicals and dangerous working conditions.  Farmworker women have been on the front lines educating their families and co-workers about their rights, not to mention teaching members of the public and the government about the many issues that they face and the priorities that they require to be safe, healthy, and productive at work.

Over the past twenty-five years, the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, with NHLA members Farmworker Justice, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) and additional organizations, has proudly worked together with the farmworker community to advance the policy concerns that are required to improve their living and working conditions.  Together over the years, we have successfully achieved improved health and safety standards, strengthened the worker protections, and increased accountability by the federal government to farmworkers. Yet more work remains to ensure that these gains are not lost and that we continue to build on the hard fought wins, including our work to promote and achieve gender equity for farmworker women.  

NHLA is committed to working with farmworker women to demand equal pay for equal work.  We have been loud and clear that we will not rest until farmworker women can work free of gender-based violence, not to mention all forms of employment discrimination.  In addition, we will not rest until immigrant farmworkers and all immigrants are able to live free of harassment, bullying, profiling, and anti-immigrant rhetoric and actions that currently leave farmworker women and their families feeling vulnerable and afraid.

We are proud to work closely with organizations like Lideres Campesinas en California, the Dolores Huerta Foundation, the United Farm Workers and many others that are committed to advancing the priorities of our nation’s agricultural workers.  Together, we will continue to march, organize, educate, raise awareness, demand what is just and resist all attempts to divide, to diminish, and to deny our collective power on behalf of one of our nation’s most important workforces.

 

Mónica Ramírez is a civil rights attorney, skilled public speaker, and an author. She has also been a women’s labor, farmworker, Latino and immigrant rights activist for more than two decades. Mónica is a nationally recognized subject matter expert on gender equity, including ending gender-based violence in the workplace against farmworker and immigrant women. She is the founder of several major initiatives and projects, including Esperanza: The Immigrant Women’s Legal Initiative of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Mónica holds a Bachelor of Arts from Loyola University Chicago, a Juris Doctor from The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, and a Master of Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School.  Mónica serves as the Director of Gender Equity and Advocacy at National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA) and the Director of Gender Equality for the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA).

 

 

Farmworker Justice is honored to host guest blogger Mónica Ramírez for today's post. Mónica serves as the Director of Gender Equity and Advocacy at National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA) and the Director of Gender Equality for the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA).

Today, more than 600,000 women make up the agricultural workforce.  They toil countless hours in agricultural fields, packing houses, and nurseries scattered across our nation. Though their work is extremely important and critical to our sustenance and the well-being of our economy, most people do not realize that such a large number of women are responsible for this work. Women’s History Month provides us with an opportunity to reflect on their many contributions. It is also a chance to consider how we can best join them in their efforts to resist anti-worker, anti-women, and anti-immigrant campaigns that harm them, their families, their interests, and our entire country.  

For decades, farmworker women leaders, like Mily Treviño Sauceda, Suguet Lopez, Ana Laura Bolaños, and many others, have been organizing to address the many issues that affect them, such as unequal pay, widespread sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, exposure to harmful chemicals and dangerous working conditions.  Farmworker women have been on the front lines educating their families and co-workers about their rights, not to mention teaching members of the public and the government about the many issues that they face and the priorities that they require to be safe, healthy, and productive at work.

Over the past twenty-five years, the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, with NHLA members Farmworker Justice, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) and additional organizations, has proudly worked together with the farmworker community to advance the policy concerns that are required to improve their living and working conditions.  Together over the years, we have successfully achieved improved health and safety standards, strengthened the worker protections, and increased accountability by the federal government to farmworkers. Yet more work remains to ensure that these gains are not lost and that we continue to build on the hard fought wins, including our work to promote and achieve gender equity for farmworker women.  

NHLA is committed to working with farmworker women to demand equal pay for equal work.  We have been loud and clear that we will not rest until farmworker women can work free of gender-based violence, not to mention all forms of employment discrimination.  In addition, we will not rest until immigrant farmworkers and all immigrants are able to live free of harassment, bullying, profiling, and anti-immigrant rhetoric and actions that currently leave farmworker women and their families feeling vulnerable and afraid.

We are proud to work closely with organizations like Lideres Campesinas en California, the Dolores Huerta Foundation, the United Farm Workers and many others that are committed to advancing the priorities of our nation’s agricultural workers.  Together, we will continue to march, organize, educate, raise awareness, demand what is just and resist all attempts to divide, to diminish, and to deny our collective power on behalf of one of our nation’s most important workforces.

 

Mónica Ramírez is a civil rights attorney, skilled public speaker, and an author. She has also been a women’s labor, farmworker, Latino and immigrant rights activist for more than two decades. Mónica is a nationally recognized subject matter expert on gender equity, including ending gender-based violence in the workplace against farmworker and immigrant women. She is the founder of several major initiatives and projects, including Esperanza: The Immigrant Women’s Legal Initiative of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Mónica holds a Bachelor of Arts from Loyola University Chicago, a Juris Doctor from The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, and a Master of Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School.  Mónica serves as the Director of Gender Equity and Advocacy at National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA) and the Director of Gender Equality for the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA).