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Is There Anyone Listening?: Women workers in factories in Central America, and Corporate Codes of Conduct

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Abstract

As a part of her on-going research, Marina Prieto-Carrón examines how corporate codes of conduct can respond to the needs and interest of women workers in supply chains in developing countries. She argues that theorizing on CSR should draw on empirical research and theories of gender and power if it wants to account for women's (and worker's) experiences. In her research she shows how important it is to listen to women workers’ arguments about how transnationals and retailers as well as suppliers must implement codes of conduct.

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Notes

  1. The material presented in this article comes from my own research work for a doctoral dissertation. In particular, it draws heavily in the fieldwork that I conducted as part of a collaborative investigation with Jem Bendell for the New Academy of Business, funded by the Department of International Development of the British Government (DFID). The project reports are available at http://www.new-academy.ac.uk/research/gendercodesauditing. The research findings presented here have been partially published (Prieto et al., 2002; Prieto, 2003).

  2. You can find more information about the work of MEC (Movimento de Mujeres Trabajadoras y Desempleadas María Elena Cuadra) in http://www.cawn.org and in http://www.maquilasolidarity.org

References

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Acknowledgements

I thank the women workers who gave their time on a Sunday (their only day off in the week) to participate in the focus group discussions. Their hopes and struggles gave me the enthusiasm to write this article.

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Prieto-Carrón, M. Is There Anyone Listening?: Women workers in factories in Central America, and Corporate Codes of Conduct. Development 47, 101–105 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.development.1100058

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