Monica Ramírez is a civil rights attorney, public speaker, and life-long activist who has spent the majority of her professional career defending female farmworkers. A graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Ramirez is the Co-Founder and President of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas and the Director of Gender Equity and Trabajadoras’ Empowerment for the Labor Council for Latin Council American Advancement.
What have you found to be the two greatest daily challenges facing farmworker women?
One of the biggest challenges would be their invisibility. For a long time, even though women were working in the fields and contributing to our economy, they were considered family migrants joining their husbands in the fields. Today, there are still farmworker women working in the fields alongside their male family members who never even receive a paycheck. When you’re made to be invisible, it is easier to exploit you. The second problem would be this issue of sexual violence in the work place. Farmworker women have reported out at much higher rates of sexual harassment than any other group of women workers in our nation. And that is because the perpetrators believe that no one sees them, no one hears them, no one cares about them, and no one is ever going to do anything to help them.
What narrative has most struck you in your work for farmworker women?
MR: Every single one of my clients is amazing and courageous. Just the fact that they made the decision to come forward is incredible, considering everything that they’ve faced. I’ve been able to see women who have not only been able to survive, but have been able to thrive as they’ve attempted to seek justice. And the justice that they are seeking is not just for themselves but for all people. Whenever I talk to clients about what they hope for their cases, they always talk about the fact that they don’t want this to happen to anyone else. The fact that farmworker women,
who are so poor and who have been made invisible by our culture and our nation, still think beyond themselves, even when they’re doing probably one of the hardest things they’ve ever done in their lives—to me that’s striking and should be celebrated.
What do you hope are the lasting impacts of the #MeToo and Times Up movements?
MR: For the first time perhaps in our nation’s history, people have been able to see the power of farmworker women. Our members decided that it was important to speak out in solidarity with women in the entertainment industry and made the decision to publish the open letter we wrote in Times Magazine. Our letter sparked the creation of the Times Up Legal Defense Fund, which now has raised about 20 million dollars in only two months and has really created a cross sector movement to address sexual harassment against all workers. That was the result of the compassion of farmworker women to say to the women in the entertainment industry that we see them, that we understand, and that we are there for them. And that was also marked by the fact that farmworker women know that we are powerful, and that we are experienced enough to be able to speak on this issue.