Even while it may seem that these labor-intensive, export-focused jobs and the injustices women must endure through them are detrimental to their status and livelihood, they will in fact be the best possible option for these women and a good alternative to simply completing unpaid domestic work. The collective action and inaction of different nations to take a stand on equal labor rights, especially for women, is a more complicated issue than commonly described, as according to Naila Kabeer in Feminist Economics. In fact, according to Kabeer, for many of the women in this industry, these jobs prove to empower them and allow for additional independence in place of simply limiting their rights. However, other studies suggest that these low-paying heavy labor jobs simply are taken on by women because of economic necessity and do not contribute to their societal independence within the patriarchal society. Some argue that the reason women will rank their low-paying job as better than other options is because the other options they had as a domestic worker did not allow them to dispute bad working conditions or wages without losing their jobs.
