“The Reality of Today Has Required Us to Change”: Negotiating Gender Through Informal Work in Contemporary Argentina

Abstract

Within Argentina and beyond, the characteristics of work are changing as work becomes increasingly informal and precarious. Drawing on interviews conducted with informal workers in Buenos Aires in 2002, this article analyzes the ways that the informalization of work during the economic crisis in Argentina shaped the interplay between normative and practiced manifestations of gender, including masculinity and femininity. I argue that although normative understandings of gender in Argentina remain largely uncomplicated by economic restructuring and crisis, the activity of informal work interacts very differently with the performances of these norms, depending on the class and sex of the worker. In particular, I demonstrate that among workers in the popular classes, the characteristics of informal work serve to mediate tensions resulting from women's engagement in paid work, while constituting an obstacle to men's performance of the hegemonic masculinity of the provider. Among middle-class workers, however, engaging in informal work does not result in the same types of tensions between gender norms and performances. I conclude by questioning the long-term nature of changes in gender relations resulting from this crisis and stressing the importance of intersectionality on understanding impacts of economic change. In addressing the question of how an increased dependence on informal work has affected gender relations in Argentina, this article seeks to contribute to wider discussions regarding the malleability of gender systems and the need to understand the effects of global restructuring on local gender relations, including performances of masculinity.

Las características del trabajo están cambiando en Argentina y otros países a medida que aquél es cada vez más informal y precario. A partir de entrevistas administradas en 2002 a trabajadores informales de Buenos Aires, este artículo analiza los modos como la informalización del trabajo durante la crisis económica de Argentina modeló la interacción entre las manifestaciones normativas y prácticas del género, incluyendo masculinidad y femineidad. Mi argumento es que aunque en Argentina la comprensión normativa de género en gran medida se mantiene sin complicaciones por la reestructuración y crisis económica, la actividad del trabajo informal interactúa muy diferentemente con los desempeños de estas normas, según la clase y sexo del trabajador. En particular, demuestro que entre los trabajadores de las clases populares, las características del trabajo informal sirven para mediar las tensiones que resultan del hecho que las mujeres se involucren en trabajo remunerado, en tanto se constituyen en un obstáculo para el desempeño de la masculinidad hegemónica de los hombres como proveedores. Entre los trabajadores de clase media, sin embargo, involucrarse en trabajo informal no resulta en los mismos tipos de tensiones entre normas de género y desempeño. Concluyo cuestionando la naturaleza de cambios a largo plazo en las relaciones de género que resultan de esta crisis y enfatizando la importancia de la interseccionalidad para la comprensión de los impactos del cambio económico. Al plantear la cuestión de cómo la creciente dependencia en trabajo informal ha afectado las relaciones de género en Argentina, este artículo busca contribuir a discusiones más amplias sobre la maleabilidad de los sistemas de género y la necesidad de entender los efectos de la reestructuración global sobre las relaciones locales de género, incluidos los desempeños de la masculinidad.

Key Words:

• Argentina
• economic crisis
• gender
• informal work
• masculinity

关键词:

• 阿根廷
• 经济危机
• 性别
• 非正式工作
• 男性阳刚之气

Palabras clave:

• Argentina
• crisis económica
• género
• trabajo informal
• masculinidad

Acknowledgments

This research was undertaken with the generous support of a Graduate Research Fellowship from the Organization of American States. Financial support was also provided by the Glenda Laws Memorial Fund from the Department of Geography at Pennsylvania State University. I would like to express my gratitude to Audrey Kobayashi and the anonymous reviewers of this article and a previous submission, whose insight, guidance, and encouragement were exceptional and truly critical in helping me to bring this article to its final form. My heartfelt thanks also go to those whose assistance was invaluable during my time in Argentina: Marcela Cerrutti, Paula Colonna, Ignacia Perrugorría, and especially Vanesa Cernadas. Finally, I am indebted to my research participants who opened their hearts and lives to me.

Notes

1. For a more complete review of theories of informal work, see Rakowski (1994); Chen, Carr, and Vanek (2004); Whitson (2004); and Valenzuela (2005). Although a number of researchers (e.g., Peattie 1987; Mead and Morrisson 1996; Olmedo and Murray 2002; Samers 2005) have questioned the usefulness of the term informal work and the formal–informal dichotomy, I continue to make use of the term in this article because, in spite of difficulties in presenting a cohesive definition of informal work, explanation of the phenomenon, or description of the activity, the concept of informal work continues to be meaningful for workers, government policymakers, and academics and in this way continues to affect the practice itself. This shared, generalized understanding of the concept of informal work, especially among people in Buenos Aires, signifies cohesiveness in the realm of social meaning that the practice itself might lack.

2. I have intentionally chosen to consider informal work in this article, as opposed to the informal sector or informal economy. Although there is a great deal of overlap in these concepts, the terms informal sector and informal economy suggest a separation and distinction from a formal sector or economy that does not exist in the context of Argentina. Informal work, on the other hand, as defined by the characteristics of the labor relation at the individual level, can be said to exist within all sectors of the economy, including the public sector in Argentina, and as a result does not constitute a distinct sector or economy. Moreover, the term informal work is more commonly used to describe the labor relationship and the legal status of the worker rather than the establishment or occupation.

3. Although a good deal of research has also been done on other aspects of masculinity in Latin America, such as fatherhood, leisure, homosociability, and sexuality (Valdés and Olavarría 1997; Archetti 1999; Gayol 2000; Viveros Vigoya, Fuller, and Olavarría 2001; Gutmann 2003a; Reddock 2004), research focusing on economic change concentrates heavily on the experience of unemployment.

4. See, for example, Fuller (2000) and Boso and Salvia (2006). In both of these cases, the researcher is focusing on unemployed men, but mentions that during the time of their “unemployment,” they engage in informal work.

5. Although not the focus of this article, this research was limited to workers with children cohabitating with a spouse or partner to facilitate the analysis of the ways that informal work affects masculine and feminine performances in the home, especially with regard to reproductive work. It is important to note, however, that many informal workers live in other family arrangements, including single-parent households or households without children (see Chant 2002). Indeed, a large number of informal workers in some occupations (e.g., vending and trash picking) are minors themselves. The focus on workers living in a two-parent family is thus not intended to normalize this living arrangement but rather to limit potential variability in household arrangements to facilitate analysis.

6. As Chant (2002, 562) has argued, the tendency continues to exist in research on gender and development for “‘traditional’ feminist research to be based only on women, and the growing body of work on masculinities to be rooted solely in work with men.” This research is thus somewhat unique in that it draws on the perceptions of men and women to discuss both masculinities and femininities. In the analysis of the interview transcripts, however, I did not identify any significant difference in the way that men and women discussed the issues presented in this article; rather, there was a strikingly high degree of similarity among the two sets of interviewees. As a result, citations were chosen for use in this article to the extent that they helped to elucidate the matter at hand, regardless of the sex of the speaker.

7. Although this methodology could be considered problematic, in that such a diverse array of workers and types of work were included in the analysis, it allowed for a consideration of the way that meanings and experiences of informal work might vary according to differing characteristics of the job or worker. It also provided an opportunity to entertain the question of whether there is anything unique to the category of informal work, either in practice or in concept.

8. It is important to note that, although workers associate informality with work that takes place in the home, it is clear that this association would not necessarily exist among all groups or in all places. As telecommuting and other formal home-based work arrangements have become more commonplace in Argentina as well as elsewhere, formal working arrangements are increasingly found within the home. As recent studies conducted in other geographic contexts indicate, however, even professional, formal work done from home challenges traditional notions of work (Randall 1993; Ahrentzen 1997), and among low-income and subsistence workers, home-based work continues to be largely informal and precarious (Miraftab 1996; Pearson 2004).

9. In interpreting the results presented in Table 1, it is important to recognize that, as a result of the sampling design, all women interviewed for this project were engaged in paid work. Among the men interviewed, all of those in the middle class and seventeen out of twenty-six in the popular sector were part of dual-income households. Although the research presented here, as a result of sampling design, is not generalizable to the entire population, the results presented in Table 1 are comparable to those of Wainerman (2002), who found that among the entire population of dual-income households in the year 2000, 46.2 percent of women were contributing equal or greater amounts than their male partners.

10. This was the case even though, according to my respondents, the crisis situation seemed to force a number of people out of what would have been a traditional job for someone of their sex and into another occupation. For instance, three popular-sector women were working with their husbands in the traditionally masculine-typed job of garbage scavenging because they were unable to find work in domestic service. Similarly, two men who worked alongside their wives cooking food in their homes to sell on the streets or to businesses were in a similar situation, as they attributed this choice of job to their lack of work in the construction industry. Additionally, because my sampling method was focused on capturing diversity among informal workers rather than being representative of the informal workforce as a whole, I made a special effort to interview people working informally in a variety of occupations. Had I not done this, within popular-class workers, I could have easily spoken only to women who worked as domestic workers and men who worked as day laborers or construction workers.

11. This is possibly the case because, without formal schooling or training that would enable them to move into less sex-segregated jobs, popular sector women engage in informal work that resembles their traditional, unpaid work in the household. By working in sex-segregated jobs that are linked to the domestic and caretaking tasks that a mother would perform, informal work serves to re-create and reinforce the norm that initially typed these jobs “feminine,” thus providing less of a challenge to this norm than might otherwise be encountered.

12. As would be expected when considering livelihood decisions as one aspect of individual gender performances, the role of caretaker did not appear to influence men's decision-making processes to the same extent: Whereas only eight of the forty-five men I interviewed cited wanting or needing to be near their children as a factor in determining their work location, fully half of the women I interviewed brought this up as an important issue in their decision-making process.

13. Although women also often brought up issues of independence in relation to informal work, only in a few cases did this appear to be a performance of this masculinity. Rather, their comments more frequently set this concern in the context of flexibility to be able to fulfill domestic requirements and rarely focused on being outside or being in the street, which is a central component of this particular gendered performance.

14. High rates of informal work characterized much of Latin America throughout the twentieth century, but in Argentina levels of informal work remained relatively low through the 1970s, at between 20 and 30 percent of waged workers (Guissarri 1989; IDEC 1991; Carpio and Novacovsky 1999).