Feminist speaker addresses inequality

By Margene Eriksen
For the Daily

Speaking to a full audience in the Pendleton Room of the Michigan Union, feminist speaker Cynthia Enloe and a male audience member removed their sneakers in the name of equality.

Enloe was trying to draw a comparison between a Nike sneaker and a Converse low top. The difference, Enloe pointed out, was between the amount of stitching involved, and therefore the amount of labor needed to produce a shoe.

Enloe, a professor of government at Clark University, has written or co-edited more than 15 books and 60 articles about feminism and international politics. The speech made last night at the Michigan Union was part of the University's "Genders, Bodies and Borders" theme semester.

The speech focused on "feminists and the global politics of sneakers."

PAUL TALANIAN/Daily Theresa Enloe spoke last night in the Michigan Union's Pendleton Room. Enloe comes in honor of this semester's "Gender, Bodies, Borders" theme.

Enloe targeted Nike and the problems of the female workforce that makes most of its shoes. Enloe said Nike folded all of its U.S. shoe factories in the 1970s, and hired subcontractors in foreign countries to produce shoes in order to access a cheaper and less demanding work force.

"Nike was assuming that women were controllable, especially if they were young, from rural areas and not organized. This is why they first looked to South Korea," Enloe said.

Enloe went on to explain how difficult it was for these women to organize labor rights groups, since they were frowned upon by their government.

Nike was forced to move its companies from South Korea to Indonesia when the women did organize protests, Enloe said. The South Korean protests helped achieve minor pay raises.

Audience questions ranged from the moral standards of the Converse company to the movie "G.I. Jane."

Rackham student Gisela Fasado said Enloe changed her perspectives on some of her buying habits.

"I feel really inspired to change the way that I am a consumer," Fasado said.

Enloe pointed out the irony of Nike ads promoting the self esteem of U.S. girls, arguing that the company discourages any acts of empowerment for women in its factories.

Enloe also pointed out that college sports players are forced to wear the "swoosh" symbol if Nike is their school's sponsor. "If a student athlete didn't want to be a walking advertisement, it wouldn't matter, because the contract with Nike says that you can't defile or cover up the symbol in any way," Enloe said.

Enloe also said that being a student at the University and opposing Nike was practically impossible.

"A student at U of M may never have owned a pair of Nikes in their lives, but the fact is that they are at a school that has a direct contract with Nike," Enloe said. "It means that female students need to think about how they are now connected to a 19 year old in Indonesia who is making $2.50 an hour."

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