Labors Appropriate to Their Sex

Gender, Labor, and Politics in Urban Chile, 1900–1930

Autor: Hutchison, Elizabeth Quay; Levenson, Deborah T.; Silverblatt, Irene; Saldívar-Hull, Sonia
Editor: Duke University Press
Col·lecció: Latin america otherwise
ISBN: 9780822327325
eISBN Pdf: 9780822381310
Lloc de publicació: Durham , United States
Any de publicació digital: 2001
Mes: Novembre
Pàgines: 360
DDC: 331.4/0983/09041
Idioma: Anglés

Descripció

In Labors Appropriate to Their Sex Elizabeth Quay Hutchison addresses the plight of working women in early twentieth-century Chile, when the growth of urban manufacturing was transforming the contours of women’s wage work and stimulating significant public debate, new legislation, educational reform, and social movements directed at women workers. Challenging earlier interpretations of women’s economic role in Chile’s industrial growth, which took at face value census figures showing a dramatic decline in women’s industrial work after 1907, Hutchison shows how the spread of industrial sweatshops and changing definitions of employment in the census combined to make female labor disappear from census records at the same time that it was in fact burgeoning in urban areas.

In addition to population and industrial censuses, Hutchison culls published and archival sources to illuminate such misconceptions and to reveal how women’s paid labor became a locus of anxiety for a society confronting social problems—both real and imagined—that were linked to industrialization and modernization. The limited options of working women were viewed by politicians, elite women, industrialists, and labor organizers as indicative of a society in crisis, she claims, yet their struggles were also viewed as the potential springboard for reform. Labors Appropriate to Their Sex thus demonstrates how changing norms concerning gender and work were central factors in conditioning the behavior of both male and female workers, relations between capital and labor, and political change and reform in Chile.

This study will be rewarding for those whose interests lie in labor, gender, or Latin American studies; as well as for those concerned with the histories of early feminism, working-class women, and sexual discrimination in Latin America.

Contents
List of Tables
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I Working-Class Life and Politics
- 1. Gender, Industrialization, and Urban Changein Santiago
- 2. Women at Work in Santiago
- 3. ‘‘To Work Like Men and Not Cry Like Women’’:The Problem of Women in Male Workers’ Politics
- 4. Somos Todas Obreras! Socialists and Working-ClassFeminism
II Women Workers and the Social Question
- 5. Women’s Vocational Training: The Female Face ofIndustrialization
- 6. Señoras y Señoritas : Catholic Women Defend theHijas de Familia
- 7. Women, Work, and Motherhood: Gender andLegislative Consensus
Conclusion: Women, Work, and Historical Change
Appendices
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index