gender roles in colombia 1950s

Variations or dissention among the ranks are never considered. Working in a factory was a different experience for men and women, something Farnsworth-Alvear is able to illuminate through her discussion of fighting in the workplace. 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. If, 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? My own search for additional sources on her yielded few titles, none of which were written later than 1988. 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. 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. Women in Colombian Organizations, 1900-1940: A Study in Changing Gender Roles. Journal of Womens History 2.1 (Spring 1990): 98-119. Colombia remains only one of five South American countries that has never elected a female head of state. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. in studying the role of women in Colombia and of more general interest for those concerned with the woman in Latin America-first, the intertwining of socioeconomic class and the "place" the woman occupies in society; second, the predominant values or perspectives on what role women should play; third, some political aspects of women's participation Female Industrial Employment and Protective Labor, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Pedraja Tomn, Women in Colombian Organizations, 1900-1940., Keremitsis, Latin American Women Workers in Transition., Mujer, Religin, e Industria: Fabricato, 1923-1982, Farnsworth-Alvear, Ann. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997, 2. A reorientation in the approach to Colombian history may, in fact, help illuminate the proclivity towards drugs and violence in Colombian history in a different and possibly clearer fashion. 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. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997. andDulcinea in the Factory: Myths, Morals, Men, and Women in Colombias Industrial Experiment, 1905-1960, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000). I have also included some texts for their, Latin America has one of the lowest formally recognized employment rates for women in the world, due in part to the invisible work of home-based labor., Alma T. Junsay and Tim B. Heaton note worldwide increases in the number of women working since the 1950s, yet the division of labor is still based on traditional sex roles.. Together with Oakley What has not yet shifted are industry or national policies that might provide more support. R. Barranquilla: Dos Tendencias en el Movimiento Obrero, Crafts, Capitalism, and Women: The Potters of La Chamba, Colombia. 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. [16], The armed conflict in the country has had a very negative effect on women, especially by exposing them to gender-based violence. Masculinity, Gender Roles, and T.V. This focus is especially apparent in his chapter on Colombia, which concentrates on the coffee sector.. 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. Duncan, Ronald J. Crafts, Capitalism, and Women: The potters of La Chamba, Colombia. Duncan, Ronald J. Friedmann-Sanchez, Greta. It is possible that most of Urrutias sources did not specify such facts; this was, after all, 19th century Bogot. Womens identities are not constituted apart from those of mensnor can the identity of individualsbe derivedfrom any single dimension of their lives. In other words, sex should be observed and acknowledged as one factor influencing the actors that make history, but it cannot be considered the sole defining or determining characteristic. Rosenberg, Terry Jean. 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 . Bergquist also says that the traditional approach to labor that divides it into the two categories, rural (peasant) or industrial (modern proletariat), is inappropriate for Latin America; a better categorization would be to discuss labors role within any export production., This emphasis reveals his work as focused on economic structures. In the space of the factory, these liaisons were less formal than traditional courtships. The body of work done by Farnsworth-Alvear is meant to add texture and nuance to the history of labor in Latin American cities. In the early twentieth century, the Catholic Church in Colombia was critical of industrialists that hired women to work for them. 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.. in contrast to non-Iberian or Marxist characterizations because the artisan occupied a different social stratum in Latin America than his counterparts in Europe. For Farnsworth-Alvear, different women were able to create their own solutions for the problems and challenges they faced unlike the women in Duncans book, whose fates were determined by their position within the structure of the system. 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.. Even today, gender roles are still prevalent and simply change to fit new adaptations of society, but have become less stressed over time. Consider making a donation! By law subordinate to her husband. Other recent publications, such as those from W. John Green and Jess Bolvar Bolvar fall back into the same mold as the earliest publications examined here. 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. 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. 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. 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,. 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. Sowell attempts to bring other elements into his work by pointing out that the growth of economic dependency on coffee in Colombia did not affect labor evenly in all geographic areas of the country., Bogot was still favorable to artisans and industry. (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2000), 75. Urrutia focuses first on class war and then industrialization as the mitigating factors, and Bergquist uses the development of an export economy. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997. 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. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989. Labor Issues in Colombias Privatization: A Comparative Perspective. Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance 34.S (1994): 237-259. Pedraja Tomn, Ren de la. Gerda Westendorp was admitted on February 1, 1935, to study medicine. This approach creates texts whose substance and focus stand in marked contrast to the work of Urrutia and others. Female Industrial Employment and Protective Labor Legislation in Bogot, Colombia. Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 24.1 (February 1982): 59-80. Farnsworth-Alvear, Ann. Keremitsis, Dawn. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1998. Prosperity took an upswing and the traditional family unit set idealistic Americans apart from their Soviet counterparts. Historians can also take a lesson from Duncan and not leave gender to be the work of women alone. war. This book is more science than history, and I imagine that the transcripts from the interviews tell some fascinating stories; those who did the interviews might have written a different book than the one we have from those who analyzed the numbers. 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. 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. Bergquist, Labor in Latin America, 315. Women filled the roles of housewife, mother and homemaker, or they were single but always on the lookout for a good husband. Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes: The Story of Women in the 1950s. 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. I get my direct deposit every two weeks. This seems a departure from Farnsworth-Alvears finding of the double-voice among factory workers earlier. There is still a lot of space for future researchliterallyas even the best sources presented here tended to focus on one particular geographic area. 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. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986. [9], In the 1990s, Colombia enacted Ley 294 de 1996, in order to fight domestic violence. 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. 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. The book goes through the Disney movies released in the 1950s and how they reinforced the social norms at the time, including gender norms. 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. 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. , have aided the establishment of workshops and the purchase of equipment primarily for men who are thought to be a better investment.. 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. Dr. Blumenfeld has presented her research at numerous academic conferences, including theCaribbean Studies AssociationandFlorida Political Science Association, where she is Ex-Officio Past President. 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. 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 as keepers of tradition are also constrained by that tradition. 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. 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. Virginia Nicholson. 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. The move generated a scandal in congress. Labor Issues in Colombias Privatization: A Comparative Perspective. Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance 34.S (1994): 237-259. andLpez-Alves, Fernando. The red (left) is the female Venus symbol. 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 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. 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.. 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. By 1918, reformers succeeded in getting an ordinance passed that required factories to hire what were called, whose job it was to watch the workers and keep the workplace moral and disciplined. The "M.R.S." Degree. 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. According to the National Statistics Department DANE the pandemic increased the poverty rate from 35.7% to 42.5%. Freidmann-Sanchez notes the high degree of turnover among female workers in the floriculture industry. My own search for additional sources on her yielded few titles, none of which were written later than 1988. . For example, the blending of forms is apparent in the pottery itself. Latin American Feminism. By the 1930s, the citys textile mills were defining themselves as Catholic institutions and promoters of public morality., Policing womens interactions with their male co-workers had become an official part of a companys code of discipline. 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. Franklin, Stephen. Farnsworth-Alvear, Ann. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Dedicated writers engaged with the Americas and beyond. This distinction separates the work of Farnsworth-Alvear from that of Duncan, Bergquist, or Sowell. Sowell, The Early Colombian Labor Movement, 14. Labor History and its Challenges: Confessions of a Latin Americanist. American Historical Review (June 1993): 757-764. 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. 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,. Russia is Re-Engaging with Latin America. Farnsworth-Alvear, Dulcinea in the Factory, 4. 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 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. 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. 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. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2000. , edited by John D. French and Daniel James. 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. Most are not encouraged to go to school and there is little opportunity for upward mobility. A 1989 book by sociologists Junsay and Heaton is a comparative study between distinct countries, with Colombia chosen to represent Latin America. Women in the 1950s. Franklin, Stephen. Women in Colombian Organizations, 1900-1940: A Study, Saether, Steiner. The only other time Cano appears is in Pedraja Tomns work. Again, the discussion is brief and the reference is the same used by Bergquist. Labor Issues in Colombias Privatization: A, Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 34.S (1994): 237-259. andLpez-Alves, Fernando. [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. Depending on the context, this may include sex -based social structures (i.e. Bergquist, Charles. Women belonging to indigenous groups were highly targeted by the Spanish colonizers during the colonial era. What was the role of the workers in the, Of all the texts I read for this essay, Farnsworth-Alvears were the most enjoyable. 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. Bolvar Bolvar, Jess. The blue (right) represents the male Mars symbol. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997. Education for women was limited to the wealthy and they were only allowed to study until middle school in monastery under Roman Catholic education. Squaring the Circle: Womens Factory Labor, Gender Ideology, and Necessity. In The Gendered Worlds of Latin American Women Workers. Required fields are marked *. 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. 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. Labor in Latin America: Comparative Essays on Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, and Colombia. While pottery provides some income, it is not highly profitable. Apparently, in Colombia during the 1950's, men were expected to take care of the family and protect family . 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. . Assets in Intrahousehold Bargaining Among Women Workers in Colombias Cut-flower Industry, Feminist Economics, 12:1-2 (2006): 247-269. Even by focusing on women instead, I have had to be creative in my approach. ?s most urgent problem According to French and James, what Farnsworths work suggests for historians will require the use of different kinds of sources, tools, and questions. 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. Men were authoritative and had control over the . 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. Crdenas, Mauricio and Carlos E. Jurez. Upper class women in a small town in 1950s Columbia, were expected to be mothers and wives when they grew up. Sowell, David. Latin American feminism, which in this entry includes Caribbean feminism, is rooted in the social and political context defined by colonialism, the enslavement of African peoples, and the marginalization of Native peoples. This understanding can be more enlightening within the context of Colombian history than are accounts of names and events. Gender Roles in the 1950's In the 1950's as of now there will always be many roles that will be specifically appointed to eache gender. Generally speaking, as one searches for sources on Colombia, one finds hundreds of articles and books on drugs and violence. Women Working: Comparative Perspectives in Developing Areas. Social role theory proposes that the social structure is the underlying force in distinguishing genders . 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. The book, while probably accurate, is flat. The research is based on personal interviews, though whether these interviews can be considered oral histories is debatable. [18], Last edited on 23 February 2023, at 14:07, "Proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments (%) | Data", "Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15-64) (Modeled ILO estimate) | Data", http://www.omct.org/files/2004/07/2409/eng_2003_04_colombia.pdf, "Unintended Pregnancy and Induced Abortion in Colombia: Causes and Consequences", "With advances and setbacks, a year of struggle for women's rights", "Violence and discrimination against women in the armed conflict in Colombia", Consejeria Presidencial para la Equidad de la Mujer, Human Rights Watch - Women displaced by violence in Colombia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Women_in_Colombia&oldid=1141128931. Figuras de santidad y virtuosidad en el virreinato del Per: sujetos queer y alteridades coloniales. The book begins with the Society of Artisans (, century Colombia, though who they are exactly is not fully explained. 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. In shifting contexts of war and peace within a particular culture, gender attributes, roles, responsibilities, and identities In reading it, one remembers that it is human beings who make history and experience it not as history but as life. gender roles) and gender expression. 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. After this, women began to be seen by many as equal to men for their academic achievements, creativity, and discipline. While pottery provides some income, it is not highly profitable. 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. Gender roles are timeless stereotypes that belong in the 1950s, yet sixty years later they still exist. Junsay, Alma T. and Tim B. Heaton. French and James. Death Stalks Colombias Unions. The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. 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. Duncan thoroughly discusses Colombias history from the colonial era to the present. VELSQUEZ, Magdala y otros. 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. French, John D. and Daniel James. The Early Colombian Labor Movement: Artisans and Politics in Bogota, 1832-1919. An additional 3.5 million people fell into poverty over one year, with women and young people disproportionately affected. 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. If success was linked to this manliness, where did women and their labor fit? 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. Pablo and Pedro- must stand up for their family's honor Divide in women. The state-owned National University of Colombia was the first higher education institution to allow female students.

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