I read an article titled, "California Enacts Bill to Protect Female Farm Workers from Sex Abuse". I found this article on the PBS Frontline website and was immediately interested because I haven't heard about it in the news before. The article is about a law that has just been passed in California to protect female farm workers from sexual abuse. There are over a half of a million undocumented females working in fields all over America, many of which have been forced into sexual relationships by their supervisors. This has not been brought up before because the undocumented women who were being sexually abused lived in fear of being deported. These women had only one option and that was to give into the required sexual pressure put on them by their superiors. The issue was brought to attention by a documentary titled, "Rape in the Fields". This documentary brings to life the seriousness of the cruelty that is happening to many women who work in the fields.
Overall, I found the reasoning for this new law in California very cogent. The new law requires the middlemen, who provide the workers, to take more responsibility on stopping rape and sexual harassment. Whether or not the middlemen were aware of the situation before, they are now and it requires them to care more about the situations of the workers they are hiring. Another cogent requirement of the new law is sexual harassment training for labor contractors, supervisors, and all farm employees. Furthermore, the state of California can now revoke licenses from contractors who have participated in sexual harassment.
These are the women who pick and process food for America, and documented or not, they should still have their basic right of being able to say no to sexual assaults. The only question I have is, why haven't other states passed this law yet?
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