Labors Appropriate to Their Sex

Hutchison Elizabeth Quay Hutchison

Description

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.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Industrial relations
• History of the Americas
• Chile
• Chili

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 15 novembre 2001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822381310
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Labors

Appropriate to

Their Sex

A book in the series latin america otherwise Languages, Empires, Nations Series editors: Walter D. Mignolo, Duke University, Irene Silverblatt, Duke University, Sonia Saldívar-Hull, University of California at Los Angeles

Gender, Labor, and Politics

in Urban Chile, 1900–1930

Labors

Appropriate to

Their Sex

Elizabeth Quay Hutchison

Duke University Press Durham & London 2001

∫2001 Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of

America on acid-free paper$

Designed by C. H. Westmoreland

Typeset in Adobe Garamond

with Franklin Gothic display

by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-

in-Publication Data appear on the

last printed page of this book.

About the Series

Latin America Otherwise: Languages, Empires, Nationsis a critical series. It aims to explore the emergence and consequences of concepts used to define ‘‘Latin America’’ while at the same time exploring the broad inter- play of political, economic, and cultural practices that have shaped Latin American worlds. Latin America, at the crossroads of competing impe- rial designs and local responses, has been construed as a geocultural and geopolitical entity since the nineteenth century. This series provides a starting point to redefine Latin America as a configuration of political, linguistic, cultural, and economic intersections that demand a continu- ous reappraisal of the role of the Americas in history, and of the ongoing process of globalization and the relocation of people and cultures that have characterized Latin America’s experience.Latin America Otherwise: Languages, Empires, Nationsis a forum that confronts established geocul- tural constructions, that rethinks area studies and disciplinary bound- aries, that assesses convictions of the academy and of public policy, and that, correspondingly, demands that the practices through which we produce knowledge and understanding about and from Latin America be subject to rigorous and critical scrutiny. Women were key participants in Chile’s transformation into an urban and industrial society during the first decades of the twentieth century. By 1912, they made up one third of Santiago’s factory workers, and were the majority labor force in textile, clothing, and tobacco enterprises. Their growing presence in urban life earned them editorials in the press along with the apprehension of both radical and conservative organiza- tions, troubled by their well being. Yet their significance has been, for the most part, ignored by scholars. Elizabeth Quay Hutchison’s study of these tumultuous times brings gender back into play. She investigates the way the gendered division of labor constrained women’s possibilities in the labor market, and bur- dened them with double work; how the growing numbers of women in urban Chile provoked concern among male-dominated labor organi-

zations while spawning the development of radical socialist feminist movements; how reformers working within the government and the Catholic Church, alarmed by the ‘‘woman question,’’ promoted pro- grams that constrained what Chile’s women could become.Labors Ap- propriate to Their Sex,recognizing the singular importance of gender as an analytical category, returns women to the complex political and eco- nomic relations of early-twentieth-century urban Chile; it makes us, therefore, understand Latin America Otherwise.

vi

About the Series

In memory of

Pablo Andrés Candia Gajardo

1969–1996 

For Regina

Contents

List of Tables xi List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1

xiii xv

I Working-Class Life and Politics 1. Gender, Industrialization, and Urban Change in Santiago 19 2. Women at Work in Santiago 36 3. ‘‘To Work Like Men and Not Cry Like Women’’: The Problem of Women in Male Workers’ Politics 59 4.Somos Todas Obreras!Socialists and Working-Class Feminism 97

II Women Workers and the Social Question 5. Women’s Vocational Training: The Female Face of Industrialization 143 6.Señoras y Señoritas: Catholic Women Defend the Hijas de Familia171 7. Women, Work, and Motherhood: Gender and Legislative Consensus 198 Conclusion: Women, Work, and Historical Change

Appendices 245 Abbreviations 257 Notes 259 Bibliography 325 Index 339

233