Horrors Befall the Women Who Make Beauty Products Possible
Read Time:2 Minute, 27 Second
A 16-year-old girl recalls how her boss raped her amid the tall trees on an Indonesian palm oil plantation that feeds into some of the world’s best-known cosmetic brands. At another plantation, a woman named Ola complains of fevers, coughing, and nose bleeds after years of spraying dangerous pesticides with no protective gear.
She is making just $2 a day, with no health benefits, and she can’t afford to see a doctor. Hundreds of miles away, Ita, a young wife, mourns the two babies she lost in the third trimester. She regularly lugged loads several times her weight throughout both pregnancies, fearing she would be fired if she did not. These are the invisible women of the palm oil industry, among the millions of daughters, mothers, and grandmothers who toil on vast plantations across Indonesia and neighboring Malaysia, which together produce 85% of the world’s most versatile vegetable oil.
Palm oil is found in everything from potato chips and pills to pet food, and also ends up in the supply chains of some of the biggest names in the $530 billion beauty business, including L’Oréal, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Avon, and Johnson & Johnson, helping women around the world feel pampered and beautiful.
The AP conducted the first comprehensive investigation focusing on the brutal treatment of women in the production of palm oil and found widespread abuses in the two countries, including human trafficking, child labor, and outright slavery. More:
- Women are burdened with some of the industry’s most difficult and dangerous jobs, spending hours waist-deep in water tainted by chemical runoff and carrying loads so heavy that, over time, their wombs can collapse and protrude.
- Many are hired by subcontractors on a day-to-day basis without benefits, performing the same jobs for the same companies for years, even decades. They often work without pay to help their husbands meet otherwise impossible daily quotas.
- Indra, 27, dreams of leaving her job at Malaysia’s Sime Darby Plantations, but it’s hard to build another life with no education and no other skills. Women in her family have worked on the same Malaysian plantation since her great-grandmother left India as a baby in the early 1900s. Like many laborers in both countries, they can’t afford to give up the company’s basic subsidized housing, which often consists of rows of dilapidated shacks without running water. That ensures the generational cycle endures, maintaining a cheap, built-in workforce.
- Read the in-depth AP piece in full here.
(Read more palm oil stories.)
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It’s a reminder to the fashionably delicate of America that it’s far, far worse elsewhere. When I was a very young electronics geek in the 1950’s I used to wonder how Radio Moscow could call us an “imperialist” country and although the soviets were far worse, I can see it now. Imperialism has always been about money and exploitation. Things we wouldn’t dream of doing to our population are just fine when done to others. That’s what slavery in the Americas was about.
Of course I don’t use moisturizers – I live in a swamp – and besides I’m a dude, but when I was a car geek I used to use Goop which I believe has a lot of lanoline in it. Gets the grease off and leaves you hands very soft. You smell like an engine though, for some time afterwards. You may want to use something else.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the S Hole country was one of those who gave a damn about other people while we were felling sorry for ourselves?
I like Goop too until it strips the nail polish from my nails.
Good for you Jess. We guys can get caught up in the same trap with some of our after shaves and colognes as well as the anti-aging stuff. I am never going to get better looking so to hell with it. 🙂 🙂
Tula has a really good moisturizing cream. Little on the expensive side $52 per jar but take it from me, a certain firefighter in my circle stole mine because he liked how it felt on his face and hands. Non greasy, no fragrance etc. Kiehls has some really good creams and lotions also with good prices.
I have kinda stopped wearing make up these last few months so I am not contributing to this issue at all and that makes me very happy indeed. Don’t got no one to impress except my own self and I am okay with my own self make up or not so is my guy. When I do wear it, mine is palm oil and its derivatives free, from Axiology or Adorn along with Earthling and Kosas for my face tint. Little bit more expensive than regular Maybelline or Cover girl but it’s worth it to be cruelty free and no crap in it. Palm oil free make up is available we just have to look for it