Multinational Corporations and the Destruction of the Family Essay

The pursuit of the bottom line is the goal of many businesses of a variety of sizes. The ability to buy cheaply, sell dearly and minimize costs across the board gives businesses an edge that allows them to create vast amounts of wealth for those with a stake in the business or corporation, but at what cost? Multinational corporations create great deals wealth but they propagate social and cultural inequality, poverty and environmental damage at rates to rival their gains. Multinational Corporations wield incredible amounts of political and economic clout, clout that allows them to manipulate a region without fear of recourse on the part of the localities in which they reside. The gains of corporations with respect to political and economic status are often accompanied by the withering of political and economic status on the part of indigenous populations and local labor forces. Specifically, the appearance of multinational corporations has served to aggravate the erosion of political and economic status at the familial level. The wielding of this economic and political power on the part of corporations is often characterized by violence on the part of its agents. One aspect that allows multinational corporations to survive in the business world is their lack of responsibility to the localities in which they do business. Albert J. Dunlap, a former CEO of multiple corporations had this to say about corporations : â€Å" The company belongs to people who invest in it- not to its employees, suppliers, nor the locality in which it is situated†. Even the market itself encourages corporations to be amoral and to turn a blind eye towards the needs of its employees and the regions. According to Richard Robbins â€Å"the fact is that environmenta... ...rized by the gendered conflict endured on the part of women worldwide. Female workers are appealing to multinational corporations because they are less likely to object to substandard working conditions(less likely to riot) and because corporations are able to pay women far less than what a man would make performing similar work. Women suffer physical and sexual abuse at the workplace in developing countries, trapped because they need the small wage they earn to support their families. The choice between starvation and abuse is a grim reality that many around the world suffer. Corporations have the power to pay women equally, and to pay all workers at a level that they can survive on, without threatening their profit margins by more than a few percent. Yet consider once again the Dunlap and Robbins quotes near the start of the paper, there is no motivation to do so.