Author: Lily Philbrook

Weekly post #4: Framing and the Pro-Choice Movement

In class, we had a brief discussion about framing and its importance in social movements. I thought it would be important and helpful to expand on this conversation, given the re-framing that the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) Pro-Choice America has recently gone under.

There are two concepts to define before getting into the discussion around NARAL’s re-branding: framing and movement capacities. As identified by Almeida in Social Movements: The Structure of Collective Mobilization, framing is how a movement and it’s opponents’ portray their ideologies and grievances to the public, keeping them engaged with and informed of their claims. Almeida explains that there are three framing tasks a movement has, which include diagnostic framing, prognostic framing, and motivational framing. Diagnostic framing is how a movement defines the problem and who to blame. Prognostic framing explains the proposed solutions to the issues. Motivational framing is the movement’s call-to-action.

Movement’s hold three kinds of capacities, as outlined by Tufecki in Twitter and Tear Gas. These include narrative, disruptive, and electoral/institutional capacities. Narrative capacity is the framing aspects of a social movement; disruptive capacity is how the disruptivity of a movement can increase/decrease their power; and electoral/institutional capacity is how much impact a movement can have in elections while trying to keep their issues in the narrative.

Now, onto NARAL Pro-Choice America name change. NARAL has changed its name to Reproductive Freedom for All (see it on their website). Originally, their message surrounded spreading pro-choice messaging and federal assurance of abortion rights. However, given the drastic decision to overturn Roe stripping abortion rights away and tossing the decision to the states, it was clear that this messaging was no longer applicable. How can an organization continue to tout pro-choice messaging when a wide array of reproductive rights are being threatened in each and every state? Reproductive rights ranging not just from abortion, but decisions around childbirth, birth control accessibility, and even court decisions around who can even be a parent. They understood that they needed to broaden their message to be more inclusive, and to showcase the importance of exactly what is at stake with the overturn of Roe. The grievance was no longer about providing more secure abortion clinics, destigmatizing abortion, and ensuring abortion rights, but is now ensuring all of the aforementioned reproductive rights for parents in every state. The blame changed, the claim changed, so the framing had to change so that NARAL could keep their narrative capacity.

News Article

Written by: Lily Philbrook

Weekly post #3: Unfreedom in Afghanistan

In class, we read about the increased state of surveillance under Ben Ali in Tunisia, discussing how increased surveillance impacts individual freedom and could possibly be categorized as unfreedom (re: Parrenas’ Unfree). In this blog post, I’ll discuss the Taliban’s implementation of surveillance across Afghanistan.

In 2021, the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, ending a twenty-year war that started with the 9/11 attacks. Almost immediately after the U.S.’ withdrawal, the Taliban took over Kabul. With this came the implementation of a multitude of laws curtailing women’s rights, ranging from bans on education for women to limits/bans on what women are allowed to do outside the home (see complete list of rules here, according to the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan). Afghanistan women live an unfree life, with rules affecting every aspect of their physical and mental livelihoods. At any moment, they can be stopped, arrested, or killed, for whatever they’re wearing or doing. This calls me back to the news article I mentioned in class a few weeks ago, an open letter from Arefa, an afghan woman. She talks about how she has qualifications, worked multiple jobs, but became barred to her house under Taliban laws. No longer able to work because of such laws, she started to speak out against the Taliban publicly, which led to decreased opportunities as organizations did not want to be associated with her out of fear of retaliation from the Taliban. She pleads to the global community for help for society of women in the same/similar situations.

It’s not enough to simply place bans with the threat of violence, though. To be able to fully ensure that all are following the rules, the Taliban has installed an overwhelming security system, with 62,000 cameras in Kabul alone — with plans to expand this security system across the rest of Afghanistan. To provide a bit of context, there are about 5 million people in Kabul – resulting in 1 camera for about 80 people. In New York City, there are about 8.5 million people, with NYPD’s security system totaling about 25,500 cameras – resulting in 1 camera for about 333 people.

This excessive monitoring exacerbates the unfreedom afghan women (and other afghan citizens) experience. Even if you aren’t caught in the moment, you could be accused at any time by the Taliban, citing surveillance. This leads to many women ending up in positions like Arefa, where the best option is to stay inside at home. In a country where you’re autonomy is subjugated in so many ways, where you can’t walk outside without your mahram (father, brother, husband), where if you try to speak up you have to hide inside, and in a world ruled by neoliberal ideologies, how can you overcome?

News Article

Written by: Lily Philbrook

Weekly post #2: Economic Policy Institute’s Chartbook on Domestic Workers in the U.S.

Throughout reading Parrenas’ Unfree, it can be easy to “other” the domestic workers in the book, throwing cultural relativism to the side and using neoliberal ideals to make it a “them” problem. In reality, implementation of labor standards that provide a safe and stable work environment when it comes to job opportunities, pay, work hours, benefits, and more are an issue everywhere, including the U.S. This can be seen through the chartbook compiled by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) from 2022. Some key findings by them are: most of them are Black, Hispanic/Latino, or Asian American/Pacific Islander women; their median pay is $13.79/hour, compared to other workers’ $21.76/hour; three times more likely to be living in poverty and with insufficient income; and only about 19% have insurance and about 9% have retirement coverage by employers.

While making the claim that these domestic workers face unfreedom may seem too bold, they do face certain aspects of it. Many of these domestic works face a sexist, racist, and inequitable society where opportunity for them is scarce. Therefore, these domestic workers are not able to freely participate in the market because of the social/financial barriers they face. Simultaneously, they can be intervened by employers using their arbitrary domination over their workers by cutting hours, offering lower pay than other workers, not offering any crucial (life-altering) benefits to workers.

In the news article, they talk about the importance of implementing a National Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act within the U.S. (and list 10 states which have already passed similar laws). This act would provide domestic workers with the crucial protections and standards they need to prevent any of the above interventions that are currently disproportionately impacting them. Additionally, this act could be a major tool for labor unions to use, to ensure more equitable labor conditions for all workers in the U.S.

The only issue is, how could this legislation be effectively implemented and enforced by U.S. authorities? If in the UAE, regulations can be passed but routinely ignored by employers as shown by Parrenas, then how can we know that the same won’t happen here?

News article

EPI’s Chartbook

National Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act

Written by: Lily Philbrook

Weekly post #1: Nepalese Domestic Workers: How Should Governments Respond to Exploitation/Abuse of Workers and Regulate Labor Standards?

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In 2007, Nepal and UAE signed their first labor agreement. In 2017, a ban was imposed on Nepali domestic workers — who are mostly comprised of women. This ban was imposed to regulate labor standards and environments for domestic workers. However, this ban ended up creating a large economic barrier for domestic workers, leading many to take illegal and dangerous routes to be able to work. For example, some would travel to other countries through a visit visa, and use that limited visa to work. This leads to complications, as they are not being recorded so no labor standards can be set in place/enforced, leading to possible exploitation and abuse. This is the very situation in which arbitrary domination is at it’s most crucial point of impact: if there is a ban that leads to domestic workers to take dangerous/illegal routes to work, which leads them to not be known about/recorded, then they cannot be protected. Even the “best” employer knows this in the back of their mind and may end up taking advantage of this situation (either through neglecting their needs, not paying them, not letting them leave, deporting them suddenly, reporting them to authorities, abusing them, and/or more).

In 2020, Nepalese domestic workers were allowed to resume travelling for domestic work jobs, but the Nepalese government set up pre-conditions. These conditions included laws for protecting the workers, establishing an agreement between Nepal and the destination countries focused on wages and leave, agreements on safety and health for the workers, requiring insurance coverage, and more. While these conditions are all necessary and it is great to see countries at least trying to implement some legal standards to protect domestic workers, as it has been shown throughout Parrenas’ Unfree, simply creating standards is not the same as enforcement and regulation of those standards.

There was major backlash from human rights and activists when Nepal imposed the ban on domestic workers. This backlash ranged from claims of limiting women’s mobility and freedom to general economic issues. As noted in Parrenas’ Unfree, countries like Nepal and the Philippines rely largely on remittances from migrant domestic workers. In addition to this backlash, the UAE has stated that they need Nepal to fully let domestic workers to migrate to their countries, but the UAE has historically shown its lax nature in enforcing any kind of labor standard, letting kafeels basically do whatever they want with their domestic workers.

This leads the government – and the rest of us – to wonder, how can we effectively implement and enforce labor standards, without restricting people’s freedom or hurting a nation’s economy?

News Article
Article about pre-conditions

Written by: Lily Philbrook