The Bandana Project: Raising Awareness of Women Farmworker Sexual Exploitation

11169655_865453580181928_2980652485813318751_oThe Bandana Project @ UO will be hosted by the ASUO Women’s Center at the  21st Coalition Against Environmental Justice Conference Restorative Justice: Healing the Spirit, Protecting the Sacred at the Many Nations Long House on April 25th.

The Bandana Project will be displayed at the Take Back the Night Rally on Thursday April 30th. They will also be displayed at the May Day Rally on Salem.

The Bandana Project launched in 2007 is a national campaign that adopted the bandana as a symbol of solidarity to end sexual violence against women farmworkers because many of them use bandanas in their workplaces to cover their faces and bodies in their attempts to prevent sexual harassment in the fields. The bandana project exhibits have been displayed in the United States, Canada, and Mexico during April which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

In 2009, legendary farmworker leader Dolores Huerta at a press conference promoted the Bandana Project as a national campaign to raise awareness and educate farmworker women about their rights in a gathering held at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago as part of a national day of action to end farmworker sexual exploitation. “This project is aimed to inspire and empower women farmworkers to speak out, Huerta said. “Women need to be able to go to work without feeling intimidated, and this applies to all workers.”

Sexual exploitation has received little attention but is known in depth by rural women, many of whom received silent sexual harassment at work. William R. Tamayo, regional attorney for the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity San Francisco, wrote in a 2000 report that “the sexual harassment of women farmers is a problem that is expanding.” In an informal survey made in 2008, 77 percent of rural women and immigrant women with low incomes in the southeast confirmed that sexual harassment is a big problem at work. In addition, an investigation in California by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that hundreds, if not thousands, of farmworker women have been forced to trade sex to get or keep jobs. Other forms of sexual harassment such as constant grabbing or inappropriate touching by supervisors were also highlighted.

Esperanza Program’s Director Monica Ramirez from the Immigrant Women’s Legal Initiative with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that “supervisors, crew leaders and co-workers frequently sexually abuse women farmworkers. Although undocumented women farmworkers are the most vulnerable, farmworker men and children are also victims, said Ramirez. Women who work at hotels, restaurants and factories also suffer sexual exploitation.”

“These bandanas offer a message of hope and solidarity for women who often suffer in silence. It’s an opportunity we have to bring this problem to light and to encourage women to keep their abusers accountable,” Ramirez said.
“No woman should be forced to give up their dignity and security of a paycheck, we can put an end to sexual violence in the workplace. We need to talk,” Dolores Huerta emphasized.