At the same time, others are severely constrained by socio-economic and historical/cultural contexts that limit the possibilities for creative action. Consider making a donation! I am reminded of Paul A. Cohens book. 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. 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. 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 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? 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. Bergquist, Labor in Latin America, 353. 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. 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. 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. 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.. (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2000), 75. There were few benefits to unionization since the nature of coffee production was such that producers could go for a long time without employees. These narratives provide a textured who and why for the what of history. The value of the labor both as income and a source of self-esteem has superseded the importance of reputation. 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. Often the story is a reinterpretation after the fact, with events changed to suit the image the storyteller wants to remember. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997. A 2006 court decision that also allowed doctors to refuse to perform abortions based on personal beliefs stated that this was previously only permitted in cases of rape, if the mother's health was in danger, or if the fetus had an untreatable malformation. Friedmann-Sanchez, Greta. Some indigenous groups such as the Wayuu hold a matriarchal society in which a woman's role is central and the most important for their society. were, where they come from, or what their lives were like inside and outside of the workplace. Online Documents. 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. 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 authors observation that religion is an important factor in the perpetuation of gender roles in Colombia is interesting compared to the other case studies from non-Catholic countries. Freidmann-Sanchez notes the high degree of turnover among female workers in the floriculture industry. Bergquist, Charles. Bergquist, Charles. war. Lpez-Alves, Fernando. 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. Squaring the Circle: Womens Factory Labor, Gender Ideology, and Necessity, 4. Keremitsis, Dawn. 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.. Bergquist, Labor in Latin America, 318. For example, the blending of forms is apparent in the pottery itself. There were few benefits to unionization since the nature of coffee production was such that producers could go for a long time without employees. 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. These themes are discussed in more detail in later works by Luz G. Arango and then by Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, with different conclusions (discussed below). Crdenas, Mauricio and Carlos E. Jurez. According to the United Nations Development Program's Gender Inequality Index, Colombia ranks 91 out of 186 countries in gender equity, which puts it below the Latin American and Caribbean regional average and below countries like Oman, Libya, Bahrain, and Myanmar. It did not pass, and later generated persecutions and plotting against the group of women. 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. Death Stalks Colombias Unions.. In academia, there tends to be a separation of womens studies from labor studies. Prosperity took an upswing and the traditional family unit set idealistic Americans apart from their Soviet counterparts. This understanding can be more enlightening within the context of Colombian history than are accounts of names and events. 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. 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. 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 . Unions were generally looked down upon by employers in early twentieth century Colombia and most strikes were repressed or worse. As did Farnsworth-Alvear, French and James are careful to remind the reader that subjects are not just informants but story tellers.. She is able to make a connection between her specific subject matter and the larger history of working women, not just in Latin America but everywhere. Like!! Only four other Latin American nations enacted universal suffrage later. 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. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1969. This focus is especially apparent in his chapter on Colombia, which concentrates on the coffee sector.. Friedmann-Sanchez, Greta. In La Chamba, as in Rquira, there are few choices for young women. This classification then justifies low pay, if any, for their work. 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. Bergquist, Charles. 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. The historian has to see the context in which the story is told. Cohabitation is very common in this country, and the majority of children are born outside of marriage. There is some horizontal mobility in that a girl can choose to move to another town for work. 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. In both cases, there is no mention of women at all. 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. 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? 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. . In the 1950s, women felt tremendous societal pressure to focus their aspirations on a wedding ring. Education for women was limited to the wealthy and they were only allowed to study until middle school in monastery under Roman Catholic education. Latin American Women Workers in Transition: Sexual Division of the Labor Force in Mexico and Colombia in the Textile Industry. Americas (Academy of American Franciscan History) 40.4 (1984): 491-504. Masculinity, Gender Roles, and T.V. History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth. Farnsworth-Alvear, Talking, Flirting and Fighting, 150. Friedmann-Sanchez, Greta. Fighting was not only a transgression of work rules, but gender boundaries separat[ed] anger, strength, and self-defense from images of femininity., Most women told their stories in a double voice,. 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. This focus is especially apparent in his chapter on Colombia, which concentrates on the coffee sector., 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.. Official statistics often reflect this phenomenon by not counting a woman who works for her husband as employed. He also takes the reader to a new geographic location in the port city of Barranquilla. But in the long nineteenth century, the expansion of European colonialism spread European norms about men's and women's roles to other parts of the world. 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. Conflicts between workers were defined in different ways for men and women. Unions were generally looked down upon by employers in early twentieth century Colombia and most strikes were repressed or worse. I specifically used the section on Disney's films from the 1950s. In the early twentieth century, the Catholic Church in Colombia was critical of industrialists that hired women to work for them. The Ceramics of Rquira, Colombia: Gender, Work, and Economic Change. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Farnsworth-Alvear, Ann. 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. [10] In 2008, Ley 1257 de 2008, a comprehensive law against violence against women was encted. In reading it, one remembers that it is human beings who make history and experience it not as history but as life. 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. Explaining Confederation: Colombian Unions in the 1980s. Latin American Research Review 25.2 (1990): 115-133. Since women tend to earn less than men, these families, though independent, they are also very poor. Urrutia focuses first on class war and then industrialization as the mitigating factors, and Bergquist uses the development of an export economy. While there are some good historical studies on the subject, this work is supplemented by texts from anthropology and sociology. 950 Words | 4 Pages. In the two literary pieces, In the . The Ceramics of Rquira, Colombia: Gender, Work, and Economic Change,1. Unfortunately, they also rely on already existing categories to examine their subjects, which is exactly what French and James say historians should avoid. French, John D. and Daniel James, Oral History, Identity Formation, and Working-Class Mobilization. In. The blue (right) represents the male Mars symbol. The research is based on personal interviews, though whether these interviews can be considered oral histories is debatable. is a comparative study between distinct countries, with Colombia chosen to represent Latin America. ANI MP/CG/Rajasthan (@ANI_MP_CG_RJ) March 4, 2023 On the work front, Anushka was last seen in a full-fledged role in Aanand L Rai's Zero with Shah Rukh Khan, more than four years ago. While some research has been done within sociology and anthropology, historical research can contribute, too, by showing patterns over time rather than snapshots., It is difficult to know where to draw a line in the timeline of Colombian history. Urrutia, Miguel. The Development of the Colombian Labor Movement, 81, 97, 101. 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. If success was linked to this manliness, where did women and their labor fit? could be considered pioneering work in feminist labor history in 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. By law subordinate to her husband. Gender includes the social, psychological, cultural and behavioral aspects of being a man, woman, or other gender identity. 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. 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. If we are studying all working people, then where are the women in Colombias history? Latin American Women Workers in Transition: Sexual Division of, the Labor Force in Mexico and Colombia in the Textile Industry., Rosenberg, Terry Jean. Fighting was not only a transgression of work rules, but gender boundaries separat[ed] anger, strength, and self-defense from images of femininity. Most women told their stories in a double voice, both proud of their reputations as good employees and their ability to stand up for themselves. The image of American women in the 1950s was heavily shaped by popular culture: the ideal suburban housewife who cared for the home and children appeared frequently in women's magazines, in the movies and on television. Female Industrial Employment and Protective Labor Legislation in Bogot, Colombia. Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 24.1 (February 1982): 59-80. Before 1933 women in Colombia were only allowed schooling until middle school level education. In academia, there tends to be a separation of womens studies from labor studies. In 1957 women first voted in Colombia on a plebiscite. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1969. Liberal congressman Jorge Elicer Gaitn defended the decree Number 1972 of 1933 to allow women to receive higher education schooling, while the conservative Germn Arciniegas opposed it. 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. 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. 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. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992. While women are forging this new ground, they still struggle with balance and the workplace that has welcomed them has not entirely accommodated them either. This paper underscores the essentially gendered nature of both war and peace. French and James. In Garcia Marquez's novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the different roles of men and women in this 1950's Latin American society are prominently displayed by various characters.The named perpetrator of a young bride is murdered to save the honor of the woman and her family. None of the sources included in this essay looked at labor in the service sector, and only Duncan came close to the informal economy. Farnsworth-Alvear shows how the experiences of women in the textile factories of Bogot were not so different from their counterparts elsewhere. 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 data were collected from at least 1000 households chosen at random in Bogot and nearby rural areas. Duncan thoroughly discusses Colombias history from the colonial era to the present. Men were authoritative and had control over the . Most are not encouraged to go to school and there is little opportunity for upward mobility. 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.. Male soldiers had just returned home from war to see America "at the summit of the world" (Churchill). 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. By the 1930s, the citys textile mills were defining themselves as Catholic institutions and promoters of public morality.. Bogot: Editorial Universidad de Antioquia, 1991. 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. Gender Roles in the 1950s: Definition and Overview Gender roles are expectations about behaviors and duties performed by each sex. Women Working: Comparative Perspectives in Developing Areas. Women's roles change after World War II as the same women who were once encouraged to work in factories to support the war effort are urged to stay home and . Her work departs from that of Cohens in the realm of myth. 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. Raisin in the Sun: Gender Roles Defied Following the event of World War Two, America during the 1950s was an era of economic prosperity. It is possible that most of Urrutias sources did not specify such facts; this was, after all, 19th century Bogot. 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). Urrutia. Women's infidelity seen as cardinal sin. 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. Bergquist, Labor in Latin America, 315. Press Esc to cancel. With the growing popularity of the television and the importance of consumer culture in the 1950s, televised sitcoms and printed advertisements were the perfect way to reinforce existing gender norms to keep the family at the center of American society. The supposed homogeneity within Colombian coffee society should be all the more reason to look for other differentiating factors such as gender, age, geography, or industry, and the close attention he speaks of should then include the lives of women and children within this structure, especially the details of their participation and indoctrination. After this, women began to be seen by many as equal to men for their academic achievements, creativity, and discipline. , (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), ix. 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. For example, the blending of forms is apparent in the pottery itself. 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. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997. Since women tend to earn less than men, these families, though independent, they are also very poor. This is essentially the same argument that Bergquist made about the family coffee farm. The reasoning behind this can be found in the work of Arango, Farnsworth-Alvear, and Keremitsis. Women as keepers of tradition are also constrained by that tradition. of a group (e.g., gender, race) occupying certain roles more often than members of other groups do, the behaviors usu-ally enacted within these roles influence the traits believed to be typical of the group.
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