The Tortilla Behemoth Through the Sociological Lens

When faced with inexplicable working conditions, one’s first consideration would be to quit their job and to find a new one. In the case of the factory workers at Hacienda Tijuana, a Mexican tortilla factory, that is certainly not the case. Throughout this article, there are many issues that are presented to the reader. This essay is structured to examine three of the main issues. It begins by looking at the exploitation of the women and their lack of rights as workers in the factory. It examines the analytical framework that would be most appropriate for this situation and then progresses to relate many sociological theories to this issue. Next, it examines the mostly negative effects of globalization, modernization and industrialization.†¦show more content†¦This relates to the analytical framework in more than one way. Firstly, the issue of gender inequality and women’s rights fits under the category of Gender-Class/ Ethnicity -Race. This section of the anal ytical framework examines how gender and class intersect and have an immense effect on the targeted person (Hristov, September 6, 2013). The issue of gender inequality goes hand-in-hand with this category due to the fact that the women in the tortilla factory are treated differently based on their gender. This has a great deal to do with their experience and their quality of life whilst at the factory. The first of many instances in which gender inequality is mentioned within the article is when the author is referring to the social structure of the tortilla factory. This is where the first theory comes into play. Max Weber’s term of social stratification greatly relates to this situation because it refers to the â€Å"Inequality between groups in society based on differences in economic resources, social status and political power.† (Hristov, October 4, 2013) Weber examines the way in which social stratification has an effect on the way people of different class syste ms are affected by the power held by the people above them. The author makes it clear that the majority of employees currently working at Hacienda Tijuana are female and that the