Though I haven’t quite finished Kwame Appiah’s book The Honor Code, it has given me helpful insight into the problems I faced when trying to fight child labor in my own home, when I was living in Dhaka. In fact, I’m sure the problems I faced are common among western travelers in the East, when we encounter systems which do not jive with what we have grown up with. I was especially struck by his section on foot binding in China, and let me start by explaining what that section taught me. Then I’ll reflect a little on my experience fighting child labor in Dhaka.
Appiah talks about the tradition of footbinding as both a national honor, and also a gender “honor” system. As with many other countries, wealthy families were proud of the fact that their daughters did not have to work. In fact, with footbinding, their daughters couldn’t work. Very similar to the Middle East where the wealthiest families were happy that their women never left the home and were never seen by outsiders. It is part of the double bind honor system. First, women are “protected” this way because they are the prizes of the family, and as such, they are kept out of sight. However, it was also understood that they could not really participate in society. I mean, they are the “weaker” sex, and they “don’t understand the complex world of law and finances” as many cultures tell us. No, I don’t believe this, I’m just repeating a long-standing trope. The other thing you’ll notice about this tradition is that only wealthy families can afford to bind the feet of daughters because working class families need their daughters to work, to earn for the family, and probably also earn while married. This is considered “low” to wealthy families, and helps distinguish wealthy women from poor women.
Appiah notes that there was an internal movement in China against footbinding, but it did not gain traction because of the overall views of women, and their “precious” place in society. When outsiders began to come into China, however, especially the missionaries, they were appalled by the tradition, and noted that it was unnatural and destructive, demeaning to women, and it denied women access to education, work, money and travel. Of course, coming from the mouths of missionaries, it was dismissed as something “outside” and presumably from a weaker society. As more women foreigners came into the country, however, the Chinese women took note of their mobility, their educated views and their financial independence. This worked on some level, but again, it was viewed as alien influence. Anti-traditional. Anti-Chinese.
Appiah notes, however, that Chinese national pride was hitting a high point in those days (1900), and Chinese men and their families were spreading around the world, and observing various cultures, and bringing back stories about the rest of the world. Everywhere these families went, people would ask about footbinding with a sense of disgust, and slowly, some Chinese began to think of it as dishonorable, a dishonorable way to treat women. Also, foreigners in China who were not missionaries, especially educated women who came to China, proved to the Chinese people that women could do things that men could do, and that women were an essential part of stepping into the modern world. If they worked, learned, contributed to society, everyone would benefit, and China would be able to keep up with the rest of the world. Of course, the Chinese were also worried about what people said about them. Their reputation, as it were, as a nation. Only when they were embarrassed by footbinding did it finally die as a tradition.
Imagine, however, the frustration of an outsider living there and seeing this thing happen right in front of his face. Maybe someone was there, watching a growing girl, and seeing her pain, hearing her cries against the practice, and the women in her own family telling her to shut up, that this was the way of Chinese women, and the pain was something to be proud of because it made her special. It would be painful to watch, but to interfere would create even more problems. But how could someone not complain? There is torture going on right there in front of you, but no one else recognizes it as pain that can be stopped, or should be stopped. They think the pain is part of the system, and if other women have done it, why can’t this woman do it? And who are you, outsider, to tell people what is or is not right for another culture?
So there I was in Bangladesh, seeing torture in front of my face. In my case, I saw child labor in my own home. A ten year old girl, miles from home, no way to contact her parents, working for nothing because her money was sent home. She worked from 6 am til midnight and then slept on the floor. She ground spices, onions, garlic in a tiny hot room, over 100 degrees, while my mother in law napped in the air-conditioned bedroom and yelled at her servant for not doing her work quick enough. She slapped the girl because she doesn’t understand how the refrigerator is put together. On talking to her, I found that she missed her home terribly, and longed to be there. She also wanted education, and when she got a taste of it, she proved herself an “A” student, with initiative, pride and inquisitiveness. And then I’m told, her work is not torture. Servants have been doing this for centuries. And I heard this defense: “Do you expect my mother to work? She is an old woman. Buy already ground spices? They don’t taste as good! She’s had servants all her life, and these young girls are the only ones that come because older girls all work in the garments factories. Older women have too many demands. They won’t sleep on the floor, and they want a day off. As if!! What choice does she have?”
My empathy for this girl was linked to my sense of shame. I was teaching courses to Brac field workers and listening to them tell me how they are fighting for the education of young girls and they tell me the sad stories of girls separated from their families. These girls commit suicide, they run away, they are raped, killed, burned, locked up, and no one protects them. Once they start working, it is very hard to get them back to their family. The family wants the money, and they know the girl can work. Again, poverty, women of wealth not working, working children taking up their burdens, the honor of the wealthy carried on the backs of the poor. The circumstances are different, but as an outsider, I faced the same opposition as the outsiders in China faced. As I continued to fight to make my mother-in-law recognize her shame, she refused to see it. Instead, she turned against me. She asked, Why should I care about this working girl? Oh, but of course, he’s a white man! That makes an excellent story to stop this interference. And then, the shame turns to me, and when I refuse to be ashamed, and I continued to act “shamelessly” in asserting this girl’s right (and other working girls, other children’s rights) to education, to be home with her family, not to be exploited by those who use the poor to their advantage, then I am reduced to a womanizer who wants to educate the girl so I can marry her …. Wait, what? That’s one way to drive a man out of your house.
My moral code, which finds child labor abhorrent, finds no traction in a country where the wealthy exploit all of the poor, from the youngest to the oldest (oh, not them. They just die on the streets), and since everyone does it, no one wants to stop it. There are some (5% I would say–a percentage noted by Appiah before footbinding found firm opposition), and it was those some that gave me hope, that gave me more impetus to step up. How could I work with people in Brac who fight child labor, and then bring my 12 year old nanny with me to a ceremony at the school? Shame on me! But then, how could our university use 12 year old boys in their kitchen, working from 8 am til who knows when, and not feel shame? Even the most educated turn a blind eye! Again, everyone does it. Who cares what these kids think and feel, they should be used to it! I mean, it is in their blood, right, not to go to school, but to work for the wealthy? It is the “tradition.” Instead, their moral code, which says a white man worried about a brown skinned girl is equivalent to prostitution, rears its ugly head and drives out the instigator. It works too, I can tell you. Will the country every feel ashamed of what it is doing, aside from a few who stand outside the system?
Maybe Appiah’s chapter on honor killing in Pakistan can give me more to reflect on in this situation.
