The Changing Class Composition of the Female Labor Force in Latin America

Bibliographic Data

ID4500726
AuthorsHelen Icken Safa (Livingston College, Rutgers University)
Year1977
Volume4
Issue4
Pages126-136
Publication date1977-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLatin American Perspectives (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-582X • E-ISSN: 1552-678X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0094582x7700400410
OpenAlexW2069046290
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited5

The shift from an agrarian to an urban society in advanced capitalist as well as Third World countries has generally been accompanied by the decline in the family as a productive unit. Commercialized agriculture and mass production of goods and services reduced the role of the individual peasant or artisan family and moved production into the factory, office, or other centralized work places, with the bulk of the male population becoming wage earners and depending entirely on the sale of their labor for an income. In both developed and less developed societies, the rise of commodity production outside the home thus introduced an entirely new division of labor in the family as well as in the society at large. As wages became increasingly important as a principal source of income, male heads of households assumed primary responsibility for the family's support, while women and children became principally a reserve labor force, called upon only in times of need or for highly specialized tasks (see Saffioti, 1969). The family no longer functioned as an economic unit, and women were relegated to a subordinate status as housewives, dependent on a man's wages and, unless they worked, deprived of an independent earning capacity. This article is a preliminary attempt to examine the changes occurring in the pattern of female labor-force participation in Latin America as a result of the development of industrial capitalism and the decline of the family as a productive unit. Several studies now appearing on women in Third World countries demonstrate that the prevailing style of development, dependent on foreign capital and a relatively small modern sector, does not favor the incorporation of women, particularly from the proletarian class, into the labor force. Increases in female employment, as a result of development and modernization, have tended to benefit women from the upper and middle strata more than women of the rural or urban proletariat, who remain locked in marginal jobs with little opportunity for upward mobility

Art · Class (philosophy) · Composition (language) · Latin Americans · Political science · Computer Science · Family Business Performance and Succession · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy

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