In G. is a comparative study between distinct countries, with Colombia chosen to represent Latin America. Gender Roles In Raisin In The Sun. Women Working: Comparative Perspectives in Developing Areas. Labor in Latin America: Comparative Essays on Chile, Argentina, Venezuela. 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. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997. Dr. Blumenfeld is also involved in her community through theMiami-Dade County Commission for Women, where served as chair of its legislative committee and as elected Member-at-large of the executive committee, and the Miami Beach Womens Conference, as part of the planning committee during its inaugural year. VELSQUEZ, Magdala y otros. Vatican II asked the Catholic Churches around the world to take a more active role in practitioners' quotidian lives. 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. Assets in Intrahousehold Bargaining Among Women Workers in Colombias Cut-flower Industry,, 12:1-2 (2006): 247-269. andPaid Agroindustrial Work and Unpaid Caregiving for Dependents: The Gendered Dialectics between Structure and Agency in Colombia,. According to French and James, what Farnsworths work suggests for historians will require the use of different kinds of sources, tools, and questions. Keremitsis, Dawn. In the 2000s, 55,8% of births were to cohabiting mothers, 22,9% to married mothers, and 21,3% to single mothers (not living with a partner). The law was named ley sobre Rgimen de Capitulaciones Matrimoniales ("Law about marriage capitulations regime") which was later proposed in congress in December 1930 by Ofelia Uribe as a constitutional reform. Gender Roles Colombia has made significant progress towards gender equality over the past century. 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. Friedmann-Sanchez,Paid Agroindustrial Work and Unpaid Caregiving for Dependents: The Gendered Dialectics between Structure and Agency in Colombia, 38. While there are some good historical studies on the subject, this work is supplemented by texts from anthropology and sociology. The main difference Friedmann-Sanchez has found compared to the previous generation of laborers, is the women are not bothered by these comments and feel little need to defend or protect their names or character: When asked about their reputation as being loose sexually, workers laugh and say, , Y qu, que les duela? They are not innovators in the world of new technology and markets like men who have fewer obligations to family and community. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992. Many have come to the realization that the work they do at home should also be valued by others, and thus the experience of paid labor is creating an entirely new worldview among them. This new outlook has not necessarily changed how men and others see the women who work. Divide in women. 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. The value of the labor both as income and a source of self-esteem has superseded the importance of reputation. Friedmann-Sanchez, Greta. These are grand themes with little room for subtlety in their manifestations over time and space. Franklin, Stephen. Employment in the flower industry is a way out of the isolation of the home and into a larger community as equal individuals. Their work is valued and their worth is reinforced by others. Throughout the colonial era, the 19th century and the establishment of the republican era, Colombian women were relegated to be housewives in a male dominated society. In the same way the women spoke in a double voice about workplace fights, they also distanced themselves from any damaging characterization as loose or immoral women. Colombia remains only one of five South American countries that has never elected a female head of state. Bergquist, Labor in Latin America, 277. Junsay, Alma T. and Tim B. Heaton. The small industries and factories that opened in the late 1800s generally increased job opportunities for women because the demand was for unskilled labor that did not directly compete with the artisans.. This analysis is one based on structural determinism: the development and dissemination of class-based identity and ideology begins in the agrarian home and is passed from one generation to the next, giving rise to a sort of uniform working-class consciousness. The book, while probably accurate, is flat. 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. (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997), 298. Many men were getting degrees and found jobs that paid higher because of the higher education they received. Gender and Education: 670: Teachers College Record: 655: Early Child Development and 599: Journal of Autism and 539: International Education 506: International Journal of 481: Learning & Memory: 477: Psychology in the Schools: 474: Education Sciences: 466: Journal of Speech, Language, 453: Journal of Youth and 452: Journal of . Prosperity took an upswing and the traditional family unit set idealistic Americans apart from their Soviet counterparts. Pedraja Tomn, Ren de la. Since women tend to earn less than men, these families, though independent, they are also very poor. 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. Sowell also says that craftsmen is an appropriate label for skilled workers in mid to late 1800s Bogot since only 1% of women identified themselves as artisans, according to census data. Additionally, he looks at travel accounts from the period and is able to describe the racial composition of the society. , where served as chair of its legislative committee and as elected Member-at-large of the executive committee, and the Miami Beach Womens Conference, as part of the planning committee during its inaugural year. Gerda Westendorp was admitted on February 1, 1935, to study medicine. Indeed, as I searched for sources I found many about women in Colombia that had nothing to do with labor, and vice versa. 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. Friedmann-Sanchez, Greta. It is not just an experience that defines who one is, but what one does with that experience. The "M.R.S." Degree. 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 in Colombian Organizations, 1900-1940: A Study, Saether, Steiner. This roughly translates to, so what if it bothers anyone? Dulcinea in the Factory: Myths, Morals, Men, and Women in Colombias Industrial Experiment, 1905-1960. Bergquist, Labor in Latin America, 364. This distinction separates the work of Farnsworth-Alvear from that of Duncan, Bergquist, or Sowell. Cano is also mentioned only briefly in Urrutias text, one of few indicators of womens involvement in organized labor. Her name is like many others throughout the text: a name with a related significant fact or action but little other biographical or personal information. Dr. Friedmann-Sanchez has studied the floriculture industry of central Colombia extensively and has conducted numerous interviews with workers in the region., Colombias flower industry has been a major source of employment for women for the past four decades. This reinterpretation is an example of agency versus determinism. , have aided the establishment of workshops and the purchase of equipment primarily for men who are thought to be a better investment.. This focus is something that Urrutia did not do and something that Farnsworth-Alvear discusses at length. Bolvar Bolvar, Jess. 40 aos del voto de la mujer en Colombia. Dr. Blumenfeld has presented her research at numerous academic conferences, including theCaribbean Studies AssociationandFlorida Political Science Association, where she is Ex-Officio Past President. 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.. I am reminded of Paul A. Cohens book. Familial relationships could make or break the success of a farm or familys independence and there was often competition between neighbors. 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. Keremetsiss 1984 article inserts women into already existing categories occupied by men. The article discusses the division of labor by sex in textile mills of Colombia and Mexico, though it presents statistics more than anything else. Sofer, Eugene F. Recent Trends in Latin American Labor Historiography. Latin American Research Review 15 (1980): 167-176. Gender Roles in 1950s Birth of the USA American Constitution American Independence War Causes of the American Revolution Democratic Republican Party General Thomas Gage biography Intolerable Acts Loyalists Powers of the President Quebec Act Seven Years' War Stamp Act Tea Party Cold War Battle of Dien Bien Phu Brezhnev Doctrine Brezhnev Era The U.S. marriage rate was at an all-time high and couples were tying the . By 1918, reformers succeeded in getting an ordinance passed that required factories to hire what were called vigilantas, whose job it was to watch the workers and keep the workplace moral and disciplined. . The use of oral testimony requires caution. Required fields are marked *. Conflicts between workers were defined in different ways for men and women. The workers are undifferentiated masses perpetually referred to in generic terms: carpenters, tailors, and crafts, Class, economic, and social development in Colombian coffee society depended on family-centered, labor intensive coffee production., Birth rates were crucial to continued production an idea that could open to an exploration of womens roles yet the pattern of life and labor onsmall family farms is consistently ignored in the literature., Similarly to the coffee family, in most artisan families both men and women worked, as did children old enough to be apprenticed or earn some money., It was impossible to isolate the artisan shop from the artisan home and together they were the primary sources of social values and class consciousness.. [15]Up until that point, women who had abortions in this largely Catholic nation faced sentences ranging from 16 to 54 months in prison. 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. For example, a discussion of Colombias, could be enhanced by an examination of the role of women and children in the escalation of the violence, and could be related to a discussion of rural structures and ideology. I specifically used the section on Disney's films from the 1950s. I get my direct deposit every two weeks. This seems a departure from Farnsworth-Alvears finding of the double-voice among factory workers earlier. Unions were generally looked down upon by employers in early twentieth century Colombia and most strikes were repressed or worse. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1998. 1950 to 57% in 2018 and men's falling from 82% to 69% (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017, 2018b). According to Bergquists earlier work, the historiography of labor in Latin America as a whole is still underdeveloped, but open to interpretive efforts. The focus of his book is undeniably on the history of the labor movement; that is, organized labor and its link to politics as history. If La Violencia was mainly a product of the coffee zones, then the role of women should be explored; was involvement a family affair or another incidence of manliness? Aside from economics, Bergquist incorporates sociology and culture by addressing the ethnically and culturally homogenous agrarian society of Colombia as the basis for an analysis focused on class and politics. In the coffee growing regions the nature of life and work on these farms merits our close attention since therein lies the source of the cultural values and a certain political consciousness that deeply influenced the development of the Colombian labor movement and the modern history of the nation as a whole. This analysis is one based on structural determinism: the development and dissemination of class-based identity and ideology begins in the agrarian home and is passed from one generation to the next, giving rise to a sort of uniform working-class consciousness. I would argue, and to an extent Friedmann-Sanchez illustrates, that they are both right: human subjects do have agency and often surprise the observer with their ingenuity. 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. In 1957 women first voted in Colombia on a plebiscite. The Development of the Colombian Labor Movement, 81, 97, 101. 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.. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000. Franklin, Stephen. According to Freidmann-Sanchez, when women take on paid work, they experience an elevation in status and feeling of self-worth. Among men, it's Republicans who more often say they have been discriminated against because of their gender (20% compared with 14% of Democratic men). Your email address will not be published. French and James. Cano is also mentioned only briefly in Urrutias text, one of few indicators of womens involvement in organized labor., Her name is like many others throughout the text: a name with a related significant fact or action but little other biographical or personal information. . 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. Thus, there may be a loss of cultural form in the name of progress, something that might not be visible in a non-gendered analysis. Activities carried out by minor citizens in the 1950's would include: playing outdoors, going to the diner with friends, etc. It is possible that most of Urrutias sources did not specify such facts; this was, after all, 19th century Bogot. On December 10, 1934 the Congress of Colombia presented a law to give women the right to study. Upper class women in a small town in 1950s Columbia, were expected to be mothers and wives when they grew up. Really appreciate you sharing this blog post.Really thank you! These narratives provide a textured who and why for the what of history. . Again, the discussion is brief and the reference is the same used by Bergquist. Saether, Steiner. The main difference Friedmann-Sanchez has found compared to the previous generation of laborers, is the women are not bothered by these comments and feel little need to defend or protect their names or character: When asked about their reputation as being loose sexually, workers laugh and say, Y qu, que les duela? While pottery provides some income, it is not highly profitable. Not only could women move away from traditional definitions of femininity in defending themselves, but they could also enjoy a new kind of flirtation without involvement. The author has not explored who the escogedoras were, where they come from, or what their lives were like inside and outside of the workplace. In Latin America, factory work is a relatively new kind of labor; the majority of women work in the home and in service or informal sectors, areas that are frequently neglected by historians, other scholars, and officials alike. By law subordinate to her husband. Men's infidelity seen as a sign of virility and biologically driven. Sibling Rivalry on the Left and Labor Struggles in Colombia During. Bergquist, Labor in Latin America, 318. Depending on the context, this may include sex -based social structures (i.e. According to the National Statistics Department DANE the pandemic increased the poverty rate from 35.7% to 42.5%. 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. 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. The Development of the Colombian Labor Movement. , (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), ix. Duncan is dealing with a slightly different system, though using the same argument about a continuity of cultural and social stratification passed down from the Colonial era. What Does This Mean for the Region- and for the U.S.? In academia, there tends to be a separation of womens studies from labor studies. Bergquist, Labor History and its Challenges: Confessions of a Latin Americanist.. Duncan thoroughly discusses Colombias history from the colonial era to the present. 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. [16], The armed conflict in the country has had a very negative effect on women, especially by exposing them to gender-based violence. Colombian women from the colonial period onwards have faced difficulties in political representation. Duncan, Crafts, Capitalism, and Women, 101. After the devastation of the Great Depression and World War II, many Americans sought to build a peaceful and prosperous society. During this period, the Andes were occupied by a number of indigenous groups that ranged from stratified agricultural chiefdoms to tropical farm family is considered destructive of its harmony and unity, and will be sanctioned according to law. Gabriela Pelez, who was admitted as a student in 1936 and graduated as a lawyer, became the first female to ever graduate from a university in Colombia. Eugene Sofer has said that working class history is more inclusive than a traditional labor history, one known for its preoccupation with unions, and that working class history incorporates the concept that working people should be viewed as conscious historical actors., 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, , and the role of unions is generally less important in comparison to the rest of Latin America.. Any form of violence in the Miguel Urrutias 1969 book The Development of the Colombian Labor Movement 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. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2000. [5], Women in Colombia have been very important in military aspects, serving mainly as supporters or spies such as in the case of Policarpa Salavarrieta who played a key role in the independence of Colombia from the Spanish empire. The assumption is that there is a nuclear family where the father is the worker who supports the family and the mother cares for the children, who grow up to perpetuate their parents roles in society. Farnsworth-Alvear, Talking, Flirting and Fighting, 150. A man as the head of the house might maintain more than one household as the number of children affected the amount of available labor. Labor Issues in Colombias Privatization: A Comparative Perspective. Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance 34.S (1994): 237-259. Women Working: Comparative Perspectives in, Bergquist, Charles. There is still a lot of space for future researchliterallyas even the best sources presented here tended to focus on one particular geographic area. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997, 2. Farnsworth-Alvear, Ann. The Ceramics of Rquira, Colombia: Gender, Work, and Economic Change. It did not pass, and later generated persecutions and plotting against the group of women. Squaring the Circle: Womens Factory Labor, History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth. 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. Duncan, Ronald J.Crafts, Capitalism, and Women: The Potters of La Chamba, Colombia. https://pulitzercenter.org/projects/south-america-colombia-labor-union-human-rights-judicial-government-corruption-paramilitary-drug-violence-education. Duncans 2000 book focuses on women and child laborers rather than on their competition with men, as in his previous book. Low class sexually lax women. . Education for women was limited to the wealthy and they were only allowed to study until middle school in monastery under Roman Catholic education. 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.. Latin American feminism focuses on the critical work that women have undertaken in reaction to the . She received her doctorate from Florida International University, graduated cum laude with a Bachelors degree in Spanish from Harvard University, and holds a Masters Degree in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from the University of Connecticut. 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. Greens article is pure politics, with the generic mobs of workers differentiated only by their respective leaders and party affiliations. In spite of a promising first chapter, Sowells analysis focuses on organization and politics, on men or workers in the generic, and in the end is not all that different from Urrutias work. While most of the people of Rquira learn pottery from their elders, not everyone becomes a potter. The assumption is that there is a nuclear family where the father is the worker who supports the family and the mother cares for the children, who grow up to perpetuate their parents roles in society. Pedraja Tomn, Ren de la. For example, a discussion of Colombias La Violencia could be enhanced by an examination of the role of women and children in the escalation of the violence, and could be related to a discussion of rural structures and ideology. fall back into the same mold as the earliest publications examined here. with different conclusions (discussed below). Friedmann-Sanchezs work then suggests this more accurate depiction of the workforce also reflects one that will continue to affect change into the future. The research is based on personal interviews, though whether these interviews can be considered oral histories is debatable. There is some horizontal mobility in that a girl can choose to move to another town for work. Women filled the roles of housewife, mother and homemaker, or they were single but always on the lookout for a good husband. Historians can also take a lesson from Duncan and not leave gender to be the work of women alone. (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2000), 75. Oral History, Identity Formation, and Working-Class Mobilization. In, Gendered Worlds of Latin American Women Workers, Lpez-Alves, Fernando. It shows the crucial role that oral testimony has played in rescuing the hidden voices suppressed in other types of historical sources. The individual life stories of a smaller group of women workers show us the complicated mixture of emotions that characterizes interpersonal relations, and by doing so breaks the implied homogeneity of pre-existing categories. This approach creates texts whose substance and focus stand in marked contrast to the work of Urrutia and others. 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. . [10] In 2008, Ley 1257 de 2008, a comprehensive law against violence against women was encted. Labor History and its Challenges: Confessions of a Latin Americanist. American Historical Review (June 1993): 757-764. In the early twentieth century, the Catholic Church in Colombia was critical of industrialists that hired women to work for them. Latin American Women Workers in Transition: Sexual Division of, the Labor Force in Mexico and Colombia in the Textile Industry., Rosenberg, Terry Jean. According to Bergquists earlier work, the historiography of labor in Latin America as a whole is still underdeveloped, but open to interpretive efforts., The focus of his book is undeniably on the history of the labor movement; that is, organized labor and its link to politics as history. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the Spaniards had established a major foothold in the Americas. Buy from bookshop.org (affiliate link) Juliet Gardiner is a historian and broadcaster and a former editor of History Today. In the space of the factory, these liaisons were less formal than traditional courtships. Thus, there may be a loss of cultural form in the name of progress, something that might not be visible in a non-gendered analysis. 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. Since then, men have established workshops, sold their wares to wider markets in a more commercial fashion, and thus have been the primary beneficiaries of the economic development of crafts in Colombia. 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. The problem for. Womens identities are still closely tied to their roles as wives or mothers, and the term, (the florists) is used pejoratively, implying her loose sexual morals., Womens growing economic autonomy is still a threat to traditional values. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989. Assets in Intrahousehold Bargaining Among Women Workers in Colombias Cut-flower Industry, Feminist Economics, 12:1-2 (2006): 247-269. While they are both concerned with rural areas, they are obviously not looking at the same two regions. Womens role in organized labor is limited though the National Coffee Strikes of the 1930s, which involved a broad range of workers including the, In 1935, activists for both the Communist Party and the UNIR (Uni, n 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, where about 85% of the workforce consisted of, Yet the women working in the coffee towns were not the same women as those in the growing areas. To the extent that . Dr. Blumenfeld is also involved in her community through the. Both Urrutia and Bergquist are guilty of simplifying their subjects into generic categories. Yo recibo mi depsito cada quincena. This roughly translates to, so what if it bothers anyone? Paid Agroindustrial Work and Unpaid Caregiving for Dependents: The Gendered Dialectics between Structure and Agency in Colombia, Anthropology of Work Review, 33:1 (2012): 34-46.