Femicide

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is an international agreement between Canada, America and Mexico. This agreement took effect in January 1994 and was signed by President Bill Clinton. This agreement brought great changes in trade volumes and open new opportunities for millions of labours. Later, in January 2008 according to the schedule all duties and restrictions were eliminated. About 45,000 tariffs were eliminated in 1994 and only 3000 were left until 1999.

Patriarchy is a social system where men dominate and govern most of the world’s economical, educational, familial, health, political, and religious systems. This political social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior females, has been taking it toll on different demographics. To maintain dominance, men exude their sensitive, inferior “masculinity” through various forms of psychological control, manipulation, violence, and terrorism. The subservient role-playing woman has to orchestrate to patriarchal chime by being nurturing, obedient, passive, and weak

NAFTA is the treaty that created the free-trading zone among the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

Mexican women are still suffering from discrimination, violence, inequality and disparity. Mexican society in general has been classified, as a male-dominated society, in which women did not have the same rights as men and they are being branded by their sex. Women in Mexico are still fighting hard to be appropriate in their own country and gain their basic human rights, their right to belong, their right to live and their right to be treated with dignity. In this essay I will explore some of the difficulties and issues Mexican women had and still have to deal with within their daily life.

First, it is imperative that one knows what exactly patriarchy is: “a social system in which power is held by men, through cultural norms and customs that favor men and withhold opportunity from women” (“Patriarchy”). Any social structure where men outrank women, where men are provided with an unequal increase in opportunities, or any system that instills stereotypical traits, or gender roles, falls under this category.

In a changing economic and political climate gender stereotypes in Juárez, Mexico refuse to change. With an increasing number of women forced into the workplace in maquiladoras(1), men's position and women's assumed position in society is being challenged. This changing economic environment in an unchanging cultural environment is part of the reason that young women are disappearing being raped and mutilated before ultimately being killed and "abandoned like meat by-products in the desert" (Pérez, March 2004). These women's bodies are entering unknowingly and unwilling into a war about cultural norms and a changing economic atmosphere.

In general those who live in Ciudad Juarez know about the recurring murders over the past decade involving women. Despite of that there are still millions that are oblivious to this occurring or choose to ignore it. It also gets less talked about comparing to other issues occurring around the world. Those who choose to talk about the subject eventually give up because they saw no immediate results or any progress at all. As stated before some chose to ignore the issue because they felt it was the easy way out and had fear of their own lives as well. Especially, the residents of Ciudad Juarez were in fear to speak of it because they felt they would put their lives endangered. However, to truly understand the severity and seriousness of this subject like many other issues you need to have some idea of how and why it started and the history or facts surrounding the issue. That is why the main focus is finding the factors that may have contributed to the recurring murders of women in Ciudad Juarez. Moreover, the effects of the murders on the victim families, the public in general, and the city. Also finding if there were any motives behind the murders of the women. Lastly, finding if there are any solutions for the murders to come to an end, any way to deter people from doing it, and has there been something done in the past decade to tackle the murders from happening again.

In 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was enacted between two industrial countries and a yet still developing nation. This was an agreement that was the first of its kind due to the relationship that the countries had and the investment opportunities that it presented. The United States, Canada, and developing Mexico decided to work towards eliminating most tariffs and non-tariff barriers between the three in order to increase the flow of trade in goods and services. Since its enactment NAFTA has led to the providing of over 40 million more jobs throughout the countries, and it has also tripled merchandise trade between the three participants to an astounding $946 billion USD in 2008 (NAFTA Now). However even then it is still not very clear whether enacting NAFTA was worth the time and effort and in fact the United States may have been better off not having joined NAFTA.

According to Crittenden and Wright (1999) one strategy to keep patriarchy in place is by using violence against women, this is not to say that all men use violence to maintain the male domination of society (Macionis and Plummer, 1998). Nevertheless there is evidence that suggests that the top levels of society, especially at the level where laws are made that the patriarchy are in control. An example of this is in 1991 rape was still considered legal within a marriage in England and Wales, this can be seen as an acceptance and observance of patriarchal ideas (Painter, 1995). This lack of law change may be because of the majority of the top jobs in government are held by men, from this it can be argued that the fact that rape was legal in marriage up to 1991 shows the male domination of the legal and political systems that women have to live under. This is in contrast with Australian law which removed the marital exemption from cases of marital rape at the earlier time of 1981 (Larcombe and Heath 2012). It is said by feminists that male power and dominance is throughout society and that domestic violence is a direct result of the patriarchal view of women’s place in society (Aitken, 2007). There is an opposing view to what causes men to become domestically violent, that it is because of an individual’s problems rather

The North American Free Trade Agreement, commonly known as the NAFTA, is a trade agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico launched to enable North America to become more competitive in the global marketplace (Amadeo, 2011). The NAFTA is regarded as “one of the most successful trade agreements in history” for its impact on increases in agricultural trade and investment among the three contracting nations (North American Free Trade Agreement, 2011). Supporters and opponents of the NAFTA have argued the effects of the agreement on participating nations since its inception; yet, close examination proves that NAFTA has had a relatively positive impact on the economies of the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Barbara Perry’s article “Doing Gender and Doing Gender Inappropriately” addresses violence and gender, and how gender is influenced through the way it is perceived in society. The construction of gender comes in polar extremes, with masculine dominant men and feminine subordinate women. Gendered violence is used to control women as a class. It is a systematic tool used by men to reinforce gender norms and patriarchal ideas of masculine superiority and feminine inferiority. It “terrorizes the collective by victimizing the individual”. Like any dichotomy, it has scripts, and to deviate from these scripts will leave you labeled as ‘unnatural’ and ‘immoral’. These scripts “constrain everything from modes of dress and social roles to ways of expressing emotion and sexual desire”. In Judith Lorber’s “A World Without Gender” we are introduced to the possibility of eliminating gender and how “degendering [would] undercut the patriarchal and oppressive structure of Western Societies”.

This documentary has three main objectives; the first of them explains what femicide is based on the crimes presented in Ciudad Juarez in order to give a complete overview of this issue, such as the impunity of the crimes and the high number of cases of women that had been assaulted. In addition to this, it was considered that more than 1.500 women had disappeared and more than 500 hundred were murdered in that city due to the assaults and acts of violence provoked by men. The second objective is related to the media and how this phenomenon becomes a well-recognized issue and was highly spread around the country. The last objective and the most important for my research, explains the causes and motivates for femicide in that country. Some

The North American Free Trade Agreement or as its most commonly known NAFTA “is a comprehensive rules-based agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico”, that came into effect on January 1,1994. All three countries signed it in December of 1992; later on November of 1993 it was ratified by the United States congress. NAFTA was not only used in cutting down on tariffs between both countries but it also help deal with issues such as Transportation, Border Issues, and Environmental Issues between these two countries. NAFTA changed some tariffs immediately and within fifteen years other tariffs will fall to zero. NAFTA was not created to just lower tariffs it was also created to open protected sectors in agriculture, energy,

Since 1993 the city of Juárez, Mexico has been plagued by femicides, the violent and deliberate killing of women. There is a general consensus that there were at least 442 femicides from 1993 to 2005 in Juárez alone, but this estimate is likely low. It is difficult to obtain an exact number as many states do not have an adequate criminal justice system or a criminal code that includes femicides. Individuals have expressed their horror in various publications: songs, books, testimonies, and in social activism. However, the events are not a global phenomenon because of their location on the United States-Mexico border. A normalization of violence in Latin America allows for the continuation of these femicides. The economic policies between Mexico

It is difficult to imagine living in a world without the patriarchal roles that are present in society and have been throughout history. In the article “Feminist Criticism,” by Lois Tyson, the idea of feminism and how society has affected feminism is the focus. These ideas are seen because men have more of a voice in nearly everything and the oppression of women is very common; a society set up like this can be described with the term patriarchy which is “any culture that privileges men by promoting traditional gender roles,” where men are cast as “rational, strong, protective, and decisive,” and women are cast “as emotional, weak, nurturing, and submissive” (Tyson, 1). This thought that men are strong and women weak is not uncommon in