From The Household To The Factory

Women in Guatemala's largest female-dominated labor sectors face persistent sex discrimination and abuse, Human Rights Watch charges in this report. The 147-page report examines two sectors, export processing and private households, which employ tens of thousands of women sewing clothes for sale in the United States and working as live-in domestic workers. The report, From the Household to the Factory: Sex Discrimination in the Guatemalan Labor Force, also finds that some U.S.-based clothing retailers contract with Guatemalan "maquilas," or export-processing factories, that discriminate against women who are pregnant. The Guatemalan labor code protects women workers from this type of discrimination, but is rarely enforced in the maquila sector. Meanwhile, women and girls working in private households do not have adequate legal protection, and are frequently subject to sexual assault and other abuses by their employers.