The Bandana Project
History of the Project
The Bandana Project is a public awareness campaign aimed at addressing the issue of workplace sexual violence against farmworker women in the United States. It is an art-activism and advocacy project that serves as a healing tool for women across the U.S., Mexico and other countries.
The Bandana Project was created by Mónica Ramírez in 2007 when she was directing Esperanza: The Immigrant Women’s Legal Initiative of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The project was created as a part of Esperanza’s national initiative to raise awareness about sexual violence against farmworker women in the workplace. Today, it is led by Justice for Migrant Women, the organization that Ramírez created in 2014 to scale Esperanza’s work into a stand-alone non-profit.
Community members, community organizations, advocates, governmental representatives, lawyers, anti-sexual violence activists and many others decorate white bandanas with words of encouragement, motivating statements, inspirational pictures and art. These bandanas are then hung in a public place as a visible demonstration of our support for farmworker women and our commitment to ending this problem.
Thousands of bandanas have been decorated around the US and in different parts of the world.
The Widespread Problem
Workplace sexual violence against farmworker women has long been a rampant problem in the agricultural industry. In fact, one of the first studies conducted in California in the 1980s found that 90% of farmworker women state that sexual harassment is a major problem. More recently, 80% of farmworker women surveyed in the California Central Valley in 2010 reported that they had experienced sexual harassment at work.
For many years, farmworker women have used layers of clothing, including hats and bandanas, as shields to help protect themselves from harassment and sexual violence while working in the fields. The Bandana Project uses white bandanas as a symbol of the sexual exploitation of farmworker women.
In solidarity, farmworker community members, advocates and other individuals decorate white bandanas to honor those who have taken action to hold the perpetrators and their employers responsible for this violence. These bandanas are also a show of support to victims whose shame and fear prevents them from taking action. Allies decorate these bandanas in an attempt to help support, fortify and empower farmworker women as they face this difficult problem in the hopes that they will no longer have to suffer in silence.