Making it at the margins: The criminalization of Nicaraguan women's labor under structural reform

Abstract

With the introduction of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) initiative in 1999, the World Bank claimed it had moved away from its heavily criticized one-size-fits-all policy approach toward more comprehensive, country-authored plans adapted to the domestic context. Unfortunately, the policies differ little from previous reform packages, prioritizing macroeconomic growth and lumping the poor into a single category. This is especially problematic for women, who represent a subordinated group in society and thus experience poverty differently than men.

This article explores women's responses to the problematic insertion of the PRSP in Nicaragua, a highly indebted poor country in its fourteenth year of structural reform. The interviews and experiences presented here show that imposition of these policies in Nicaragua without regard for the specific country context has had two major impacts. First, it further entrenches women into traditional gender roles, increasing their dependence on men. Second, it pushes women into informal and, increasingly, illicit activities to ensure their families' well-being. The growing numbers of women involved in drug trafficking, prostitution and illegal migration find their labor not only invisibilized, but also criminalized by the reform process.

Keywords:

• employment
• gender
• labor markets
• Nicaragua
• structural adjustment

Notes

1. The study was conducted in January 2004 and included informal, long interviews (more than two hours each) with twenty women, urban and rural, employed in the formal, informal and illicit sectors. I also conducted long interviews with ten local organizations working on gender and debt issues. The study relied heavily on my experience living and working in Nicaragua from 1998–2001, when I was based in Managua but spent substantial time in the Estelí and Matagalpa regions. See the reference list for my previous work on gender, debt and labor issues in Nicaragua (Willman 1999, 2000).

2. The Sandinista government implemented a structural adjustment plan in 1987 without support from the international financial institutions. The costs of the Contra war, coupled with economic mismanagement, had brought hyperinflation of over 33,000 percent. The plan is generally considered even stricter than subsequent IMF plans, and was discontinued within a year.

3. Nicaragua's debt increased dramatically during the Contra War in the 1980s. By the time the war had ended and relations with the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) had been re-established, the debt stood at $10.7 billion, much of it owed to the former USSR. Russia cancelled all of Nicaragua's debts in 1996. During the 1990s Nicaragua's debt shifted toward multilateral organizations. At present 38 percent of the debt is owed to multilateral creditors (Avendaño 2003b). Although under an agreement at the 2005 G-8 summit, Nicaragua's multilateral debt is set to be cancelled, Nicaragua will likely remain on structural adjustment under IMF and World Bank advice.

4. Civil society groups called on Consultative Group for Follow-Up of the Stockholm Accords, part of the Consultative Group for the Reconstruction and Transformation of Central America, formed after Hurricane Mitch hit the region in 1998. The Consultative Group pressured the Nicaraguan government to make the PRSP available in Spanish to civil society groups.

5. The Civil Coordinator, a coalition of Nicaraguan organizations formed to advocate on the use of reconstruction funds and debt relief following Hurricane Mitch in 1998, has conducted several broad consultations and social audits. See CCER (2001a, 2001b) for further information. The Civil Coordinator reports some improvements in government consultation efforts with civil society on subsequent documents, such as the 2001 Strengthened PRSP and follow-up reports (see Quirós et al. 2003: 44).

6. The fourth pillar, ‘good governance’, was not included in the original document, but was added at the insistence of civil society groups.

7. Women make up between 70–80 percent of the workforce in the maquila sector (see CENIDH 2003).

8. Calculations using Nicaraguan Central Bank data, adjusted for inflation. The basic goods basket – containing basic needs for a family of four for one month, rose from C$736.43 in 1992 to C$2185.31 in 2003.

9. Maternal mortality is one of the most problematic social indicators in Nicaragua. For 2001, UNFPA reported 250 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, in contrast to the Nicaraguan Health Ministry's 95 per 100,000 (UNFPA 2002). The Second Progress Report on the Strengthened PRSP announced a new methodology for measuring maternal mortality that would include only deaths strictly related to obstetrics. This brought the figure for 1999 (base year for the Millennium Development Goals) from 148 to 118 deaths per 100,000 live births (World Bank 2002).

10. In his ethnography of a Nicaraguan middle-class neighborhood during the 1980s, Roger Lancaster describes how girls are taught to be loyal to the family, while male children are socialized to be ‘tough’, both in domestic and political life. In one instance, an older man punches a young boy to ‘toughen him up’, and remarks, ‘Sometimes we hit the boys just to toughen them up … so that when somebody attacks them, or pushes them around, or perhaps when the United States invades, they'll come back …’ (Lancaster 1992: 42–7. For more discussions of Nicaraguan machismo see pp. 117–25, 164–78.)

11. As Kampwirth (1998) has argued the image of the Virgin Mary was exploited heavily in the campaign leading up to the 1990 presidential elections. Candidate and eventual winner Violeta Chamorro often appeared in white and her status as widow of a martyr (her husband Pedro Joaquin Chamorro was assassinated under the Somoza dictatorship) and mother of soldier sons promoted the image of ‘traditional’ womanhood.

12. Cited in Puntos de Encuentro (2003: 37–8).

13. See Florence Babb's (2001) ethnography of a Managua neighborhood during the 1990s for more discussion of the growing involvement of women in prostitution.