The Situation of Working Women in Tucumán in the 1970s: The Case of Women Textile Workers

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the labor situation of women workers from popular sectors, with emphasis on the textile industry, within a context of occupational crisis during the 1970s. It seeks to understand how, as a result of various family, emotional, and social factors, women in Tucumán entered the labor market and, in many cases, became the main support and only source of income for their family groups. This constitutes the starting point of the research, which aims to provide an approach to the study of women’s labor situations.

Our argument is based on the claim that the transformation of the labor market promoted the incorporation of female labor into the industrial sector. This new role as household providers, in some cases the only one, implied a transformation in women’s subjectivity that, for some of them, was not accepted as such. The study also examines women’s intra- and extra-domestic strategies, which characterize the double workday.

It should be clarified that this analysis was approached from the perspectives of gender and oral history. Women experience a double workday, a concept that some authors understand as involving both extra-domestic and intra-domestic labor. Starting from these concepts, the paper examines the various strategies developed by women workers in the textile industry. These women, in one way or another, sought different strategies to combine extra- and intra-domestic work, always pursuing the well-being of their families and, especially in the case of married women, of their children.

Oral sources, consisting of semi-structured interviews, as well as statistical data and bibliographical material relevant to the subject, were used in carrying out this study.