This focus is something that Urrutia did not do and something that Farnsworth-Alvear discusses at length. Squaring the Circle: Womens Factory Labor, Gender Ideology, and Necessity, 4. Some texts published in the 1980s (such as those by Dawn Keremitsis, ) appear to have been ahead of their time, and, along with Tomn,. For example, it is typical in the Western world to. Duncan, Ronald J. Rosenberg, Terry Jean. Crdenas, Mauricio and Carlos E. Jurez. Writing a historiography of labor in Colombia is not a simple task. Farnsworth-Alvear, Talking, Flirting and Fighting, 150. Oral History, Identity Formation, and Working-Class Mobilization. In, Gendered Worlds of Latin American Women Workers, Lpez-Alves, Fernando. French and James think that the use of micro-histories, including interviews and oral histories, may be the way to fill in the gaps left by official documents. Only four other Latin American nations enacted universal suffrage later. The U.S. marriage rate was at an all-time high and couples were tying the . Yo recibo mi depsito cada quincena.. If the traditional approach to labor history obscures as much as it reveals, then a better approach to labor is one that looks at a larger cross-section of workers. Most union members were fired and few unions survived., According to Steiner Saether, the economic and social history of Colombia had only begun to be studied with seriousness and professionalism in the 1960s and 1970s. Add to that John D. French and Daniel Jamess assessment that there has been a collective blindness among historians of Latin American labor that fails to see women and tends to ignore differences amongst the members of the working class in general, and we begin to see that perhaps the historiography of Colombian labor is a late bloomer. Women Working: Comparative Perspectives in Developing Areas. Sibling Rivalry on the Left and Labor Struggles in Colombia During. While there are some good historical studies on the subject, this work is supplemented by texts from anthropology and sociology. Anthropologist Ronald Duncan claims that the presence of ceramics throughout Colombian history makes them a good indicator of the social, political, and economic changes that have occurred in the countryas much as the history of wars and presidents., His 1998 study of pottery workers in Rquira addresses an example of male appropriation of womens work., In Rquira, pottery is traditionally associated with women, though men began making it in the 1950s when mass production equipment was introduced. Together with Oakley gender roles) and gender expression. This classification then justifies low pay, if any, for their work. fall back into the same mold as the earliest publications examined here. This poverty is often the reason young women leave to pursue other paths, erod[ing] the future of the craft., The work of economic anthropologist Greta Friedmann-Sanchez reveals that women in Colombias floriculture industry are pushing the boundaries of sex roles even further than those in the factory setting. The law's main objective was to allow women to administer their properties and not their husbands, male relatives or tutors, as had been the case. Bergquist, Charles. The book then turns into a bunch of number-crunching and charts, and the conclusions are predictable: the more education the person has the better the job she is likely to get, a woman is more likely to work if she is single, and so on. Women in Colombian Organizations, 1900-1940: A Study in Changing Gender Roles. Journal of Womens History 2.1 (Spring 1990): 98-119. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997. French, John D. and Daniel James. Her analysis is not merely feminist, but humanist and personal. Bergquist, Charles. With the introduction of mass production techniques, some worry that the traditional handcrafted techniques and styles will eventually be lost: As the economic momentum of mens workshops in town makes good incomes possible for young menfewer young women are obligated to learn their gender-specific version of the craft.. In the two literary pieces, In the . Womens work in cottage-industry crafts is frequently viewed within the local culture as unskilled work, simply an extension of their domestic work and not something to be remunerated at wage rates used for men. This classification then justifies low pay, if any, for their work. I am reminded of Paul A. Cohens book History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth. Farnsworths subjects are part of an event of history, the industrialization of Colombia, but their histories are oral testimonies to the experience. For example, while the men and older boys did the heavy labor, the women and children of both sexes played an important role in the harvest. This role included the picking, depulping, drying, and sorting of coffee beans before their transport to the coffee towns.Women and girls made clothes, wove baskets for the harvest, made candles and soap, and did the washing. On the family farm, the division of labor for growing food crops is not specified, and much of Bergquists description of daily life in the growing region reads like an ethnography, an anthropological text rather than a history, and some of it sounds as if he were describing a primitive culture existing within a modern one. Duncan, Ronald J. Caf, Conflicto, y Corporativismo: Una Hiptesis Sobre la Creacin de la Federacin Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia en 1927. Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura 26 (1999): 134-163. Saether, Steiner. The same pattern exists in the developing world though it is less well-researched. The only other time Cano appears is in Pedraja Tomns work.. In La Chamba, as in Rquira, there are few choices for young women. "[13], Abortion in Colombia has been historically severely restricted, with the laws being loosened in 2006 and 2009 (before 2006 Colombia was one of few counties in the world to have a complete ban on abortion);[14] and in 2022 abortion on request was legalized to the 24th week of pregnancy, by a ruling of the Constitutional Court on February 21, 2022. She is . Women Working: Comparative Perspectives in Developing Areas. Bergquist, Labor in Latin America, 277. Some texts published in the 1980s (such as those by Dawn Keremitsis and Terry Jean Rosenberg) appear to have been ahead of their time, and, along with Tomn, could be considered pioneering work in feminist labor history in Colombia. They are not innovators in the world of new technology and markets like men who have fewer obligations to family and community. The press playedon the fears of male readers and the anti-Communism of the Colombian middle and ruling classes. Working women then were not only seen as a threat to traditional social order and gender roles, but to the safety and political stability of the state. Both Urrutia and Bergquist are guilty of simplifying their subjects into generic categories. Junsay, Alma T. and Tim B. Heaton. Women Working: Comparative Perspectives in, Bergquist, Charles. Bolvar Bolvar, Jess. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000. As never before, women in the factories existed in a new and different sphere: In social/sexual terms, factory space was different from both home and street. It was safer than the street and freer than the home. They explore various gender-based theories on changing numbers of women participating in the workforce that, while drawn from specific urban case studies, could also apply to rural phenomena. Indeed, as I searched for sources I found many about women in Colombia that had nothing to do with labor, and vice versa. with different conclusions (discussed below). This reinterpretation is an example of agency versus determinism. Drawing from her evidence, she makes two arguments: that changing understandings of femininity and masculinity shaped the way allactors understood the industrial workplace and that working women in Medelln lived gender not as an opposition between male and female but rather as a normative field marked by proper and improper ways of being female. The use of gender makes the understanding of historio-cultural change in Medelln in relation to industrialization in the early twentieth century relevant to men as well as women. Labor Issues in Colombias Privatization: A Comparative Perspective. Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance 34.S (1994): 237-259. For example, the blending of forms is apparent in the pottery itself. There is room for a broader conceptualization than the urban-rural dichotomy of Colombian labor, as evidenced by the way that the books reviewed here have revealed differences between rural areas and cities. One individual woman does earn a special place in Colombias labor historiography: Mara Cano, the Socialist Revolutionary Partys most celebrated public speaker. Born to an upper class family, she developed a concern for the plight of the working poor. She then became a symbol of insurgent labor, a speaker capable of electrifying the crowds of workers who flocked to hear her passionate rhetoric. She only gets two-thirds of a paragraph and a footnote with a source, should you have an interest in reading more about her. It is true that the women who entered the workforce during World War II did, for the . At the same time, women still feel the pressures of their domestic roles, and unpaid caregiving labor in the home is a reason many do not remain employed on the flower farms for more than a few years at a time., According to Freidmann-Sanchez, when women take on paid work, they experience an elevation in status and feeling of self-worth. Duncans book emphasizes the indigenous/Spanish cultural dichotomy in parallel to female/male polarity, and links both to the colonial era especially. Upper class women in a small town in 1950s Columbia, were expected to be mothers and wives when they grew up. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the Spaniards had established a major foothold in the Americas. Like what youve read? Pedraja Tomn, Women in Colombian Organizations, 1900-1940., Keremitsis, Latin American Women Workers in Transition.. Bolvar Bolvar, Jess. In reading it, one remembers that it is human beings who make history and experience it not as history but as life. The Early Colombian Labor Movement: Artisans and Politics in Bogota, 1832-1919. While he spends most of the time on the economic and political aspects, he uses these to emphasize the blending of indigenous forms with those of the Spanish. Anthropologist Ronald Duncan claims that the presence of ceramics throughout Colombian history makes them a good indicator of the social, political, and economic changes that have occurred in the countryas much as the history of wars and presidents. His 1998 study of pottery workers in Rquira addresses an example of male appropriation of womens work. In Rquira, pottery is traditionally associated with women, though men began making it in the 1950s when mass production equipment was introduced. However, the 1950s were a time of new definition in men's gender roles. Women also . Given the importance of women to this industry, and in turn its importance within Colombias economy, womens newfound agency and self-worth may have profound effects on workplace structures moving forward. The ideal nuclear family turned inward, hoping to make their home front safe, even if the world was not. Pablo and Pedro- must stand up for their family's honor By the 1930s, the citys textile mills were defining themselves as Catholic institutions and promoters of public morality.. Gender Roles in Columbia in the 1950s "They knew how to do screen embroidery, sew by machine, weave bone lace, wash and iron, make artifical flavors and fancy candy, and write engagement announcements." Men- men are expected to hold up the family, honor is incredibly important in that society. Each author relies on the system as a determining factor in workers identity formation and organizational interests, with little attention paid to other elements. Talking, Fighting, and Flirting: Workers Sociability in Medelln Textile Mills, 1935-1950. In The Gendered Worlds of Latin American Women Workers, edited by John D. French and Daniel James. The Digital Government Agenda North America Needs, Medical Adaptation: Traditional Treatments for Modern Diseases Among Two Mapuche Communities in La Araucana, Chile. Duncan, Ronald J.Crafts, Capitalism, and Women: The Potters of La Chamba, Colombia. Television shows, like Father Knows Best (above), reinforced gender roles for American men and women in the 1950s. Gender role theory emphasizes the environmental causes of gender roles and the impact of socialization, or the process of transferring norms, values, beliefs, and behaviors to group members, in learning how to behave as a male or a female. None of the sources included in this essay looked at labor in the service sector, and only Duncan came close to the informal economy. According to Freidmann-Sanchez, when women take on paid work, they experience an elevation in status and feeling of self-worth. The reasoning behind this can be found in the work of Arango, Farnsworth-Alvear, and Keremitsis. both proud of their reputations as good employees and their ability to stand up for themselves. It is possible that most of Urrutias sources did not specify such facts; this was, after all, 19, century Bogot. Sowell, The Early Colombian Labor Movement, 14. Womens role in organized labor is limited though the National Coffee Strikes of the 1930s, which involved a broad range of workers including the escogedoras. In 1935, activists for both the Communist Party and the UNIR (Unin Nacional Izquierda Revolucionaria) led strikes. The efforts of the Communist Party that year were to concentrate primarily on organizing the female work force in the coffee trilladoras, where about 85% of the workforce consisted of escogedoras. Yet the women working in the coffee towns were not the same women as those in the growing areas. There is a shift in the view of pottery as craft to pottery as commodity, with a parallel shift from rural production to towns as centers of pottery making and a decline in the status of women from primary producers to assistants. In academia, there tends to be a separation of womens studies from labor studies. Most of the women who do work are related to the man who owns the shop. Womens work supports the mans, but is undervalued and often discounted. The book then turns into a bunch of number-crunching and charts, and the conclusions are predictable: the more education the person has the better the job she is likely to get, a woman is more likely to work if she is single, and so on. The number of male and female pottery workers in the rural area is nearly equal, but twice as many men as women work in pottery in the urban workshops. In town workshops where there are hired workers, they are generally men. They were interesting and engaging compared to the dry texts like Urrutias, which were full of names, dates, and acronyms that meant little to me once I closed the cover. What Does This Mean for the Region- and for the U.S.? High class protected women. Gender includes the social, psychological, cultural and behavioral aspects of being a man, woman, or other gender identity. Explaining Confederation: Colombian Unions in the 1980s.. They were taught important skills from their mothers, such as embroidery, cooking, childcare, and any other skill that might be necessary to take care of a family after they left their homes. Many indigenous women were subject to slavery, rape and the loss of their cultural identity.[6]. This may be part of the explanation for the unevenness of sources on labor, and can be considered a reason to explore other aspects of Colombian history so as not to pigeonhole it any more than it already has been. In 1957 women first voted in Colombia on a plebiscite. Dulcinea in the Factory: Myths, Morals, Men, and Women in Colombias Industrial Experiment, 1905-1960. In a meta-analysis of 17 studies of a wide variety of mental illnesses, Gove (1972) found consistently higher rates for women compared to men, which he attributed to traditional gender roles. Labor History and its Challenges: Confessions of a Latin Americanist. American Historical Review (June 1993): 757-764. She finds women often leave work, even if only temporarily, because the majority of caregiving one type of unpaid domestic labor still falls to women: Women have adapted to the rigidity in the gendered social norms of who provides care by leaving their jobs in the floriculture industry temporarily. Caregiving labor involves not only childcare, especially for infants and young children, but also pressures to supervise adolescent children who are susceptible to involvement in drugs and gangs, as well as caring for ill or aging family. VELSQUEZ, Magdala y otros. Farnsworth-Alvear, Dulcinea in the Factory, 4. Unions were generally looked down upon by employers in early twentieth century Colombia and most strikes were repressed or worse. The Ceramics of Rquira, Colombia: Gender, Work, and Economic. Women are included, yet the descriptions of their participation are merely factoids, with no analysis of their influence in a significant cultural or social manner. In La Chamba, there are more households headed by women than in other parts of Colombia (30% versus 5% in Rquira)., Most of these households depend on the sale of ceramics for their entire income. This understanding can be more enlightening within the context of Colombian history than are accounts of names and events. He also takes the reader to a new geographic location in the port city of Barranquilla. Labor History and its Challenges: Confessions of a Latin Americanist. American Historical Review (June 1993): 757-764. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986. Conflicts between workers were defined in different ways for men and women. This paper underscores the essentially gendered nature of both war and peace. French, John D. and Daniel James. Of all the texts I read for this essay, Farnsworth-Alvears were the most enjoyable. Gender Roles In In The Time Of The Butterflies By Julia Alvarez. Sofer, Eugene F. Recent Trends in Latin American Labor Historiography. Latin American Research Review 15 (1980): 167-176. It is possible that most of Urrutias sources did not specify such facts; this was, after all, 19th century Bogot. These narratives provide a textured who and why for the what of history. During American involvement in WWII (1941-1947), women regularly stepped in to . Not only is his analysis interested in these differentiating factors, but he also notes the importance of defining artisan in the Hispanic context,. Figuras de santidad y virtuosidad en el virreinato del Per: sujetos queer y alteridades coloniales. I have also included some texts for their absence of women. Junsay, Alma T. and Tim B. Heaton. Women make up 60% of the workers, earning equal wages and gaining a sense of self and empowerment through this employment. Crdenas, Mauricio and Carlos E. Jurez. Bogot: Editorial Universidad de Antioquia, 1991. Dr. Blumenfeld has presented her research at numerous academic conferences, including theCaribbean Studies AssociationandFlorida Political Science Association, where she is Ex-Officio Past President. History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth. Duncan, Crafts, Capitalism, and Women, 101. (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2000), 75. Using oral histories obtained from interviews, the stories and nostalgia from her subjects is a starting point for discovering the history of change within a society. The men went into the world to make a living and were either sought-after, eligible bachelors or they were the family breadwinner and head of the household. According to the National Statistics Department DANE the pandemic increased the poverty rate from 35.7% to 42.5%. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Dynamic of marriage based on male protection of women's honour. Corliss, Richard. What was the role of the workers in the trilladoras? Keremitsis, Dawn. [12] Article 42 of the Constitution of Colombia provides that "Family relations are based on the equality of rights and duties of the couple and on the mutual respect of all its members. Among women who say they have faced gender-based discrimination or unfair treatment, a solid majority (71%) say the country hasn't gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men. Since the 1970s, state agencies, like Artisanas de Colombia, have aided the establishment of workshops and the purchase of equipment primarily for men who are thought to be a better investment. The reasoning behind this can be found in the work of Arango, Farnsworth-Alvear, and Keremitsis. Most union members were fired and few unions survived., According to Steiner Saether, the economic and social history of Colombia had only begun to be studied with seriousness and professionalism in the 1960s and 1970s., Add to that John D. French and Daniel Jamess assessment that there has been a collective blindness among historians of Latin American labor, that fails to see women and tends to ignore differences amongst the members of the working class in general, and we begin to see that perhaps the historiography of Colombian labor is a late bloomer. In G. According to French and James, what Farnsworths work suggests for historians will require the use of different kinds of sources, tools, and questions. Sibling Rivalry on the Left and Labor Struggles in Colombia During the 1940s. Latin American Research Review 35.1 (Winter 2000): 85-117. Green, W. John. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997, 2. For the people of La Chamba, the influence of capitalist expansion is one more example of power in a history of dominance by outsiders. Greens article is pure politics, with the generic mobs of workers differentiated only by their respective leaders and party affiliations. The nature of their competition with British textile imports may lead one to believe they are local or indigenous craft and cloth makers men, women, and children alike but one cannot be sure from the text. , (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), ix. This is essentially the same argument that Bergquist made about the family coffee farm. They explore various gender-based theories on changing numbers of women participating in the workforce that, while drawn from specific urban case studies, could also apply to rural phenomena. Women are included, yet the descriptions of their participation are merely factoids, with no analysis of their influence in a significant cultural or social manner. Press Esc to cancel. . These themes are discussed in more detail in later works by Luz G. Arango. As Charles Bergquist pointed out in 1993,gender has emerged as a tool for understanding history from a multiplicity of perspectives and that the inclusion of women resurrects a multitude of subjects previously ignored. Masculinity, Gender Roles, and T.V. The author has not explored who the. He cites the small number of Spanish women who came to the colonies and the number and influence of indigenous wives and mistresses as the reason Colombias biologically mestizo society was largely indigenous culturally. This definition is an obvious contradiction to Bergquists claim that Colombia is racially and culturally homogenous. 1950 to 57% in 2018 and men's falling from 82% to 69% (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017, 2018b). Bergquist, Charles. Your email address will not be published. He notes the geographical separation of these communities and the physical hazards from insects and tropical diseases, as well as the social and political reality of life as mean and frightening. These living conditions have not changed in over 100 years and indeed may be frightening to a foreign observer or even to someone from the urban and modern world of the cities of Colombia. is considered the major work in this genre, though David Sowell, in a later book on the same topic,, faults Urrutia for his Marxist perspective and scant attention to the social and cultural experience of the workers. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989. . A group of women led by Georgina Fletcher met with then-president of Colombia Enrique Olaya Herrera with the intention of asking him to support the transformation of the Colombian legislation regarding women's rights to administer properties. The press playedon the fears of male readers and the anti-Communism of the Colombian middle and ruling classes., Working women then were not only seen as a threat to traditional social order and gender roles, but to the safety and political stability of the state. This idea then is a challenge to the falsely dichotomized categories with which we have traditionally understood working class life such as masculine/feminine, home/work, east/west, or public/private., As Farnsworth-Alvear, Friedmann-Sanchez, and Duncans work shows, gender also opens a window to understanding womens and mens positions within Colombian society. Caf, Conflicto, y Corporativismo: Una Hiptesis Sobre la Creacin de la Federacin Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia en 1927., Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura. Her text delineates with charts the number of male and female workers over time within the industry and their participation in unions, though there is some discussion of the cultural attitudes towards the desirability of men over women as employees, and vice versa. There were few benefits to unionization since the nature of coffee production was such that producers could go for a long time without employees. The blue (right) represents the male Mars symbol. It seems strange that much of the historical literature on labor in Colombia would focus on organized labor since the number of workers in unions is small, with only about 4% of the total labor force participating in trade unions in 2016, and the role of unions is generally less important in comparison to the rest of Latin America. If the traditional approach to labor history obscures as much as it reveals, then a better approach to labor is one that looks at a larger cross-section of workers.