This is an incredible statistic, but has been published in several newspapers in the United States. It was a surprise to U.S. feminists who went to the international environmental conference in Brazil, when the Brazilian women rejected their plea to stop having so many babies who, they said, would use up the world's resources. The Brazilian women replied that the vast majority of the world's resources are used in the United States, and Brazilian babies use few resources. They were offended and outraged. The respondents do see the possibility of employment as a good thing.
Some work is better than no work.
However, the maquiladoras tend to hire only women and very young men, usually teenagers, because of the need for manual dexterity. Immediately, all fathers of families are further marginalized from the employment market as well as from the family. Husbands could be retrained to be mothers and child care people, but that may not come soon enough. Back to the Nineteenth Century Those of us who have studied the development of the Industrial Revolution know so well the tremendous oppression of the laborers in factories during the last century or two. The great irony of economic investment in other countries is the development of factories with working conditions that are very similar to those condemned in the past by Popes.