Recovered companies in Argentina: gendered production, space and schedule

María Inés Fernández Álvarez
mfernandezalvarez@conicet.gov.ar
CONICET, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina

Florencia Partenio
fpartenio@ceil-piette.gov.ar
CONICET, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract:

The recovery of companies and factories has been one of the most intriguing social mobilization experiences in recent years in Argentina. The term recovered factory has been used to name a specific struggle for employment sources, in which workers combine labor and self-management. Since 2002, the authors have carried out an ethnographic research on recovered factories in the Buenos Aires area. As they note it, these processes are mainly characterized by production becoming an action struggle, modifying both everyday life’s space and time. Building upon a critical perspective of gender studies, we analyze implications of these changes for women participating in recovery processes. We suggest that women’s participation —considered in view of their lives’ conditions and trajectories— entails developing creative skills in order to negotiate their own time face to the time they ought to devote to their families.

Keywords: recovered companies, gender, social mobilization, work, self-management