Chocolate is everywhere in western societies but rarely do we think about what it takes to create this readily available treat. In Côte d’Ivoire, Africa, which is known as the largest producer of cocoa beans with over one third of the coca needed for global consumption created there. Citizens live in poverty with over 46.3% living under the poverty line (World Bank 2015). With public unease prevalent and a lack of economic, social, and political agency available to the individual, many unpleasant practices have arisen. Continual crisis has exacerbated inequality, child workers are commonplace, and exploitation by big companies a norm. In this paper I examine woman’s inequality and child labor in the cocoa industry and how it cannot easily …show more content…
In 1990 a law was passed that said that anyone under the age of eighteen was considered a child (Manzo, 2014). There is another contradictory paper that gives age range from six to fourteen as the time that children should not work and should only go to school (Manzo, 2014). These laws were created to keep children safe unfortunately they do not include what different cultures determine to be an adult nor does it show the adolescents who work to support their family. In Cˆote d’Ivoire most farms are small and run by family members (Nkamleu, Kielland, 2005). Schools being far from the family farm. With no car to transport the children or public transportation some farmers will forgo schooling for their children and instead show them how to grow cocoa as a trade. In Cˆote d’Ivoire alone there would need to be over 36,000 new school rooms built to address the lack of access most citizens have to education (Lambert, …show more content…
So parents will give consent to their relatives thinking they will have a better life and send them to live away from home (Bourdillon, 2009). Knowing they cannot take care of their children the parents will feel gratitude towards the relative or friend that takes in their children. After being sent away the parents will trust the relative that they will treat the child nicely and not as a slave. Child labor cannot be looked at ethnocentrically or the underlying problem will never be found. In most cases the problem is not child labor but poverty that is rampant in the Ivory