This past Thursday, students, faculty, and community members gathered to hear investigative journalist Bernice Yeung discuss her first book In a Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers. The culmination of over five years of investigating sexual violence, In a Day’s Work illuminates the experiences of immigrant woman farmworkers, janitorial workers, and domestic workers, exposing the “epidemic of sexual violence” which plagues their industries. Yeung’s book also highlights the women’s struggle for reform and justice in their industries.
Photo courtesy of Javier Arbona
Yeung’s talk focused on sharing the stories of women in these working-class industries who are forced to endure both singular and repeated instances of sexual assault while trying to do their jobs. These women, Yeung explained, face incredibly high stakes if they want to report their harassers or assaulters. Often, their supervisors are the perpetrators of the violence, and the women find themselves faced with losing their jobs, threats of deportation, or continued violence. For some of the women, language barriers may prevent them from reporting their assault in situations in which their rapists may be the only translator available to them on the job.
In a Day’s Work is based on Yeung’s reporting since 2012, beginning with her work investigating the sexual assault of immigrant woman farmworkers with the Emmy-nominated Rape in the Fields reporting team. She then examined sexual assault of female janitors as the lead reporter for the Emmy-nominated Rape on the Night Shift reporting team, where she noticed patterns similar to the experiences of the farmworkers.
While Yeung’s book lays out the many challenges that these women face, it also features stories of the women’s resilience and resistance, including activism to establish a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights and reform efforts in the tomato fields of Florida. While the February 2018 release of In a Day’s Work coincided with the rise of the #MeToo movement, Yeung acknowledges that the efforts of these worker communities did not begin with #MeToo and their stories should continue to be told. Her audience, she explained, is people who care about these workers’ stories but may not have the opportunities or time to speak directly with the women and hear their stories.
Yeung will be speaking about In a Day’s Work on Sunday, September 2nd at the Decatur Book Festival. Find more details about the event here.