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

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

This article was downloaded by: [Whitson, Risa]On: 31 March 2010Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 918383527]Publisher RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Annals of the Association of American GeographersPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t788352614

“The Reality of Today Has Required Us to Change”: Negotiating GenderThrough Informal Work in Contemporary ArgentinaRisa Whitson a

a Department of Geography and Program of Women's and Gender Studies, Ohio University,

First published on: 14 December 2009

To cite this Article Whitson, Risa(2010) '“The Reality of Today Has Required Us to Change”: Negotiating Gender ThroughInformal Work in Contemporary Argentina', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100: 1, 159 — 181, Firstpublished on: 14 December 2009 (iFirst)To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/00045600903379059URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00045600903379059

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf

This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial orsystematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply ordistribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contentswill be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug dosesshould be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directlyor indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t788352614

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00045600903379059

http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf

“The Reality of Today Has Required Us toChange”: Negotiating Gender Through Informal

Work in Contemporary ArgentinaRisa Whitson

Department of Geography and Program of Women’s and Gender Studies, Ohio University

Within Argentina and beyond, the characteristics of work are changing as work becomes increasingly informaland precarious. Drawing on interviews conducted with informal workers in Buenos Aires in 2002, this articleanalyzes the ways that the informalization of work during the economic crisis in Argentina shaped the inter-play between normative and practiced manifestations of gender, including masculinity and femininity. I arguethat although normative understandings of gender in Argentina remain largely uncomplicated by economicrestructuring and crisis, the activity of informal work interacts very differently with the performances of thesenorms, depending on the class and sex of the worker. In particular, I demonstrate that among workers in thepopular classes, the characteristics of informal work serve to mediate tensions resulting from women’s engage-ment in paid work, while constituting an obstacle to men’s performance of the hegemonic masculinity of theprovider. Among middle-class workers, however, engaging in informal work does not result in the same types oftensions between gender norms and performances. I conclude by questioning the long-term nature of changesin gender relations resulting from this crisis and stressing the importance of intersectionality on understandingimpacts of economic change. In addressing the question of how an increased dependence on informal workhas affected gender relations in Argentina, this article seeks to contribute to wider discussions regarding themalleability of gender systems and the need to understand the effects of global restructuring on local genderrelations, including performances of masculinity. Key Words: Argentina, economic crisis, gender, informal work,masculinity.

Las caracterısticas del trabajo estan cambiando en Argentina y otros paıses a medida que aquel es cada vez masinformal y precario. A partir de entrevistas administradas en 2002 a trabajadores informales de Buenos Aires,este artıculo analiza los modos como la informalizacion del trabajo durante la crisis economica de Argentinamodelo la interaccion entre las manifestaciones normativas y practicas del genero, incluyendo masculinidad yfemineidad. Mi argumento es que aunque en Argentina la comprension normativa de genero en gran medidase mantiene sin complicaciones por la reestructuracion y crisis economica, la actividad del trabajo informalinteractua muy diferentemente con los desempenos de estas normas, segun la clase y sexo del trabajador. Enparticular, demuestro que entre los trabajadores de las clases populares, las caracterısticas del trabajo informalsirven para mediar las tensiones que resultan del hecho que las mujeres se involucren en trabajo remunerado, entanto se constituyen en un obstaculo para el desempeno de la masculinidad hegemonica de los hombres comoproveedores. Entre los trabajadores de clase media, sin embargo, involucrarse en trabajo informal no resulta enlos mismos tipos de tensiones entre normas de genero y desempeno. Concluyo cuestionando la naturaleza de

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100(1) 2010, pp. 159–181 C© 2010 by Association of American GeographersInitial submission, September 2007; revised submission, August 2008; final acceptance, October 2008

Published by Taylor & Francis, LLC.

Downloaded By: [Whitson, Risa] At: 17:31 31 March 2010

160 Whitson

cambios a largo plazo en las relaciones de genero que resultan de esta crisis y enfatizando la importancia de lainterseccionalidad para la comprension de los impactos del cambio economico. Al plantear la cuestion de comola creciente dependencia en trabajo informal ha afectado las relaciones de genero en Argentina, este artıculobusca contribuir a discusiones mas amplias sobre la maleabilidad de los sistemas de genero y la necesidad deentender los efectos de la reestructuracion global sobre las relaciones locales de genero, incluidos los desempenosde la masculinidad. Palabras clave: Argentina, crisis economica, genero, trabajo informal, masculinidad.

Since I began working taking surveys and all that, andwe’ve both been working, things have changed. Before,when I worked for the state and Victoria didn’t work,things were more rigid. I did absolutely nothing in thehouse and she did it all, and the kids were her responsi-bility. Well, now this has changed. Even though I don’twash clothes and I don’t iron, the tasks that deal with theeducation of the kids and those things, we share. . . . Butnow what happens is that a lot of the time we aren’t inagreement about how these things should be done. WhenI wasn’t around, we didn’t have this problem. But now,since we’ve both been doing these things, we’ve begun tohave problems. I used to not even ask about these thingsand to me everything seemed happier before.

—Ernesto, informal worker, Buenos Aires (2002)

L ike many in Argentina, the livelihood strategiesof Ernesto and Victoria, middle-class residents ofBuenos Aires, have changed drastically since the

end of the 1990s. Prior to 1997, Ernesto had alwaysworked formally and Victoria did not work outside ofthe home, but rather took primary responsibility for thecare of their house and two children. After that time,however, because of the continued deterioration of theeconomy, Ernesto was forced to sell his business and hebegan working informally, conducting marketing sur-veys. Victoria began to work informally as well, mak-ing and selling craft and food items from their home.When I interviewed them in 2002, many of the couple’scomments, like the one just presented, focused on thechallenges that adjusting to this new livelihood strategyposed. As Ernesto commented to me, “We were a couplewith a certain way of doing things for a long time, andthe reality of today has required us to change.” The “re-ality of today” that Ernesto mentions refers largely to theeconomic crisis that peaked in Argentina in 2002. Thiscrisis, which began during the late 1990s, was charac-terized by skyrocketing levels of under- and unemploy-ment, devaluation of the currency, and high levels ofinflation and disinvestment. As Ernesto and Victoria’sexperience indicates, the effects of this crisis were feltdeeply at the household level as long-standing liveli-hood arrangements were transformed and new strategiesfor subsistence were explored. In this article, I explore

the effects of this crisis—in particular the informaliza-tion of work—on masculine and feminine norms andperformances of Argentine workers.

As has been well documented in the context of pre-vious economic crises and economic restructuring moregenerally, a realignment of traditional gender roles inresponse to new livelihood strategies often accompanieseconomic change (Gonzalez de la Rocha and Gantt1995; Arriagada 1998; Radcliffe 1999; Toro-Morn,Roschelle, and Facio 2002). In particular, researchershave focused on the decline in traditional, formalopportunities for male employment coupled with an in-crease in women’s participation in the formal labor mar-ket, arguing that these changes have alternately (andin some cases simultaneously) empowered women, bur-dened them with extra work, or created a “crisis of mas-culinity” among men (Safa 1995; Ward and Pyle 1995;Laurie 1999; Chant 2000; Viveros Vigoya 2001). Al-though it is clear from current literature that genderedrelationships often shift when women enter and menleave the workforce, the effect of the characteristics ofthe work itself on gendered performances and expecta-tions within households is less clear. Yet the characteris-tics of work are changing both in Argentina and beyond.In Argentina, rates of informal work among employeesin private industry rose continuously throughout the1990s, and by the end of 2002 had reached almost 50percent (Instituto Nacional de Estadıstica y Censos[INDEC] 2002). Similar changes are occurring globally,as rates of informal work have risen and formal work hasbecome increasingly informalized due to changes in thestructure of the economy that heighten the importanceof flexible labor relationships (Standing 1999). TheInternational Labor Organization (ILO 2002, 5), forexample, reports that “the bulk of new employment inrecent years, particularly in developing and transitioncountries, has been in the informal economy,” andconcludes that researchers can no longer consider thistype of work temporary or residual. Not only is informalwork growing in importance, but work in general isinformalizing as the model of the secure waged laborerwith employment-based benefits and social protectionsdisappears (Arriagada 1998; Radcliffe 1999).


Negotiating Gender Through Informal Work in Contemporary Argentina 161

Starting with the premise that gendered meaning iscreated through everyday activities, and work consti-tutes, as a result, a critical site in which gender normsand practices are created, enacted, and negotiated, thisarticle analyzes the way that the change in the natureof work during long-term economic restructuring andeconomic crisis shapes the interplay between normativeand practiced manifestations of gender. In particular, Ifocus on one important aspect of economic restructur-ing and crisis as they have been manifest in Argentina:the increased participation of people from all sectorsof society in informal work. In addressing the questionof how economic crisis, and in particular an increaseddependence on informal work, has affected gender sys-tems in Argentina, this article seeks to contribute towider discussions regarding the malleability of gendernorms and performances, the importance of the chang-ing nature of work on individual identity and socialrelations, and the need to understand the effects ofglobal restructuring on local gender relations, includ-ing performances of masculinity. By focusing on theway that dependence on informal work is perceived toaffect one aspect of people’s lives—that is, their genderperformance—this analysis also provides insight intothe meanings and experiences of informal work, andindeed work more generally, in the context of present-day Argentina. Finally, this analysis highlights the rolethat geographical constructs and contexts at multiplescales play in mediating gender and work processes.

Drawing on the experiences of informal workers inArgentina during the crisis in 2002, I argue that theeffects of the informalization of work, much like the ef-fects of the neoliberal economy that this informalizationis a part of, are multiple, variable, and contradictory,in that they reinforced and enabled certain traditionalgendered performances among some sectors of societywhile complicating other gendered performances. I be-gin by discussing the context of crisis and informal workin Argentina, placing this particular example withinthe framework of more general academic debates onthe concept of informal work. Following this, I reviewcurrent literature on the effects of the changing char-acteristics of work on gender norms. After a brief dis-cussion of the research methodology used in this study,I demonstrate that although normative understandingsof gender for men and women in Argentina remain,for the most part, uncomplicated by economic restruc-turing and crisis, the activity of paid work interactsvery differently with the performances of these norms,depending on the class and sex of the worker. In partic-ular, I argue that among workers in the popular classes,

the characteristics of informal work might serve to me-diate tensions resulting from women’s engagement inpaid work, whereas among men the practice of informalwork might constitute an obstacle to the performanceof the hegemonic masculinity of the provider. Amongmiddle-class workers, I suggest that engaging in informalwork does not result in the same types of tensions be-tween gender norms and performances that are presentin the popular classes; this is a result of both less rigidnormative gender expectations and the different placeof informal work within family livelihood strategies as awhole. I conclude by questioning the long-term natureof changes in gender relations resulting from this crisis,arguing that research focusing on gender and economicchange must continue to be sensitive to differences ingendered norms and performances and stressing the im-portance of intersectionality on understanding impactsof economic change.

Theorizing Informal Work and Gender inContemporary Argentina

During the past decade, the need to adjust to eco-nomic change and crisis conditions has become acentral aspect of the Argentine experience. The neo-liberal structural adjustment policies implemented bythe Menem administration in the early 1990s ini-tially seemed to buoy the ailing economy, but by themid-1990s, it was clear that the changes that hadbeen instituted—including privatization, a convertibil-ity plan, regional integration, and trade liberalization—were creating conditions of economic hardship formuch of the population. Beginning in 1995, unemploy-ment rates began to rise while real incomes declined andcuts in government spending for basic services served tocreate a “new poor” among lower- to middle-class Ar-gentines (Cerrutti 2000; Feijoo 2001; Rapoport 2002).This situation came to a head in 2001, when the publicresponded to the declining economic conditions andpolitical instability through mass demonstrations in thestreets and plazas.

The economic crisis, which up to this point had beenslowly developing, escalated in 2002 into a completeeconomic collapse. In an effort to avoid a run on thebanks, the government imposed what was referred toas a corralito, placing tight limits on the amount ofmoney that could be withdrawn from bank accounts.When this proved unsuccessful in stopping the escala-tion of the crisis, the peso was unpegged from the dol-lar, allowing it to devalue on the open market, and the


162 Whitson

monetary system of the country was converted com-pletely to pesos, causing the value of savings, whichhad previously been in dollars, to decrease by one thirdovernight. These measures resulted in an abrupt halt ofthe cash economy at a time when unemployment wasskyrocketing and poverty rates had reached over 50 per-cent in the country as a whole (INDEC 2002). Ratesof informal work, which had been increasing steadilythroughout the 1990s, rose dramatically during this pe-riod, such that 48 percent of all waged employees inprivate industry were working informally by the end of2002 (INDEC 2002). When adding to this number es-timates of informal work among self-employed workers,public employees, domestic workers, and unpaid familyworkers, as well as those with secondary informal jobs,the level of informal work during the crisis can be es-timated at well over 60 percent of all workers, a ratehigher than any time during the previous sixty years.As the country slowly stabilized and began the processof recovering from this crisis, although other indica-tors of economic health have improved, levels of in-formal work have continued to remain high, with over41 percent of employees in the private sector currentlyworking fully informally (INDEC 2007).

A wide-ranging literature exists on informal work,reflecting the ubiquitous and varied nature of thephenomenon. The earliest set of theories describes aphenomenon that was subsistence oriented in natureand functions, as it does for many of the poorest inArgentina, as a labor sponge for low-skill workers withlittle formal education (Rakowski 1994). Subsequenttheories, focusing on different types of informalactivities, propose alternative interpretations to thisstructuralist explanation. Initiating a neoliberal ap-proach to informal work that views it as entrepreneurialand capitalistic, de Soto challenges what he sees as amercantilistic state that overregulates the economy,inhibiting small-scale entrepreneurs and businessowners from formalizing (de Soto 1989; Guissarri1989; Maloney 2004). A third explanation, commonlytermed neo-marxist, links informal work intimately tothe formal sector, as subcontracting and decentralizingallow informal work to directly and indirectly subsidizeformal firms in an environment of increased regulationand competitiveness (Moser 1978; Portes, Castells, andBenton 1989; Portes and Schauffler 1993; Portes andHoffman 2003; Centeno and Portes 2006). These threeschools of thought differ in how they account for theexistence of informal work, but the literature as a wholeprovides a loose definition that is consistently used inboth theoretical and empirical research on this topic:

Informal work deals with legal products and services,although the production or distribution of these prod-ucts or services is either illegal or unregulated (Castellsand Portes 1989; Thomas 1992, 1995; ILO 2002).1

This definition suggests that informal work often lacksa formal contract, does not provide standard benefits,is excluded from legal labor protection and represen-tation, and is unregistered and untaxed.2 Aside fromthese definitional characteristics that are consistentlyassociated with informal work, however, the conceptof informal work describes widely variable experiences:There is the potential for informal work to occur in anytype of occupation and to be done by any type of worker,regardless of education, class, sex, or level of resourcesavailable. In Buenos Aires, this variety in informalwork experiences exists not only in theory but in realityas well, as people across class boundaries and in almostall occupations have increasingly entered into informalwork activities as the last decade and a half progressed.

The phenomenon of informal work is, of course,not confined to the Argentine context nor to the ex-periences of transitional or less developed economies.Rather, over the last two decades, informal work has be-come increasingly important to a large number of peoplein economies of all types, including advanced capitalistcountries (Portes, Castells, and Benton 1989; Williamsand Windebank 1993; ILO 2002). The majority of re-searchers read the increased dependence on informalwork worldwide as one element of broader neoliberalchanges surrounding the way that work is structured. Inparticular, many argue that informal and other casual la-bor relationships, such as temporary and part-time con-tractual arrangements, are intimately connected to theincreased dominance and expansion of a global capital-ist system (Lema 2001; Freije 2002; Olmedo and Murray2002; Silveira and Matosas 2005). This perspective sug-gests both that policies of privatization and deregula-tion have resulted in a contraction in the availabil-ity of formal-sector jobs (Beccaria and Quintar 1995;Duryea and Szekely 1998; Klein and Tokman 2000)and that trends toward labor flexibility increase theability of employers to use nonstandard contracts, even-tually resulting in increased informality (Barbieri 1996;Olmedo and Murray 2002). Standing (1989, 1999) hasreferred to these changes as part of a “feminization” ofthe labor force, using this term to suggest that manyof the changes associated with the informalization oflabor globally are similar to those historically found tocharacterize women’s labor, including low levels of em-ployment and income security, decreased access to ben-efits and labor protection, and a decline in skilled jobs



with the potential for upward mobility. Scholars fo-cusing on Latin America and Argentina confirm thesetrends (Instituto de Estudios Contemporaneos [IDEC]1991; Lopez and Monza 1995; Arriagada 1998; Radcliffe1999; Lema 2001; Freije 2002; Galli and Kucera 2003;Portes and Hoffman 2003; Silveira and Matosas 2005).

How are these changes in the characteristics of workaffecting other social systems, in particular gender sys-tems? As feminist geographers as well as researchersand practitioners in the field of gender and develop-ment have long argued, gender roles, relations, and ex-pectations are linked to the performance of economicactivities, and economic changes can in turn affectgender systems (Massey 1994; Massey and McDowell1994; Laurie et al. 1999; McDowell 1999; Toro-Morn,Roschelle, and Facio 2002; Pyle and Ward 2003; Secor2003; Mohanty 2004; Cupples 2005). In the context ofLatin America in particular, livelihood patterns havechanged significantly over the last few decades, as theregion has seen a dramatic increase in women’s la-bor force participation—particularly in the services andexport-oriented manufacturing—in large part as a resultof neoliberal restructuring of the economy (Radcliffe1999; Abramo and Valenzuela 2001; Chant 2003). Inaddition, as men find it increasingly difficult to secureformal employment due to recession and crisis condi-tions in the region, women have frequently entered thelabor force to supplement household income (Gonzalezde la Rocha and Gantt 1995; Arriagada 1998; Lau-rie 1999; Lawson 1999; Meier 1999; Radcliffe 1999;Benerıa 2003). Although labor force participation ratesfor women have risen over the past decades, the char-acter of women’s work has remained less than idealin the region: Women continue to be found dispro-portionately in low-status, low-wage, precarious, andinformal jobs (Radcliffe 1999; Abramo and Valenzuela2001; Chant 2002, 2003).

In spite of frequently less-than-ideal workingsituations for women, on the whole, these changes inlivelihood patterns have resulted in shifts in family or-ganization, as men no longer have the sole responsibilityfor providing economic support for the family, and aswomen’s identities and activities are decreasingly tiedexclusively to their domestic roles (Chant and Gut-mann 2002; Wainerman 2002; Latapı 2003). As Chant(2002) and Kabeer (2007) argued, however, these shiftshave had contradictory outcomes that do not alwaysresult in increased empowerment of women withinthe home. On the one hand, these changes might leadwomen to “redefine their domestic role and challengethe myth of the male breadwinner” (Safa 1995, 35)

as their contribution to household finances provideswomen with a basis on which to resist male dominance(Olavarrıa 2003); however, rather than empowerment,many women might simply experience an increasedwork burden, as men are frequently unwilling to take uptraditionally female work or relinquish privileges withinthe home traditionally associated with breadwinning(Ward and Pyle 1995; Benerıa 2003; Kabeer 2007).

Whereas the literature on gender and economicchange, both in Latin America and beyond, has tra-ditionally focused on the effects of changes in thedivision of labor on women, in the past decade, agreater emphasis has been placed on understandinghow changes in the division of labor affect men andmen’s gendered performances as well. In the context ofeconomic crisis and restructuring within Latin Amer-ica, many researchers have focused on the impact ofunemployment on men, especially as it affects theirperformance of the masculine role of the provider, acornerstone of hegemonic masculinity in the region.3

Researchers have argued that, as a result of men’s inabil-ity to perform this role successfully because of changes inthe labor market, a “crisis of masculinity” has occurred(Chant 2000; C. Jackson 2000; Viveros Vigoya 2001),which affects men’s identities, self-esteem, and per-ceived abilities to fulfill the social expectations placedon them (de Suremain and Acevedo 1999; Fuller 2000;Boso and Salvia 2006). Despite these changes, how-ever, dominant perceptions and discourses of masculin-ity have not changed in the region but have remainedstable (Willott and Griffin 1996; Fuller 2000; Guerreroand Anaya 2006) and work continues to be a corner-stone of men’s identities even in the context of under-or unemployment (Chant 2002).

In spite of the increase in research on masculinity inthe previous decade, however, the need continues toexist for issues of men and masculinity to be incorpo-rated into studies on gender and development (Chantand Gutmann 2000; C. Jackson 2000; Viveros Vigoya2001; Cleaver 2002). One issue in particular that needsto be explicitly considered is the gray area of the im-pact of nonstandard forms of work on masculinity, andindeed on gender systems more generally. Whereas theeffects of men’s increasing unemployment on gendernorms and performances have been the focus of a greatdeal of research, nonstandard forms of employment suchas informal work are rarely given explicit considerationwith regard to masculine performances. Rather, theytend to be mentioned in the literature only to the ex-tent that they are activities that occur during timesof unemployment;4 however, if the informalization of


164 Whitson

work is not simply a short-term irregularity in the econ-omy, but rather represents a new paradigm in work rela-tions, it needs to be given more explicit consideration.

A number of empirical studies exist that focus tosome extent on the difference of men’s and women’s ex-periences of informal work. This literature suggests thatwomen are overrepresented in informal work and thatmen’s and women’s informal work differs systematicallyin terms of the type of work, remuneration levels, andcontrol over labor and resources (Hoyman 1987; Mon-tecinos 1994; Sainz and Larin 1994; Tuominen 1994;Dennis 1995; A. M. Scott 1995; Arizpe 1997; Espinaland Grasmuck 1997; McKeever 1998; Vincent 1998;T. D. Wilson 1998; Roca 1999; Bisio and Forni2001; Freije 2002; ILO 2002; Silveira and Matosas 2005;Valenzuela 2005). Thus, whereas women often workin low-wage, subsistence-oriented jobs that allow themlittle control over their labor and resources, men tendto enter the informal economy with the potential ofearning more than were they to work formally; theyparticipate in dynamic, growth-oriented jobs; and theymaintain control over their own labor and resources.Despite this empirical consideration of the differencesbetween men’s and women’s experience of informalwork, however, to the extent that gender is consid-ered in the literature on informal work, it is almostalways viewed as a static characteristic of the individ-ual worker, rather than a socially produced discourseand constantly negotiated aspect of individual identity.Although some researchers have considered the im-pacts on the gender system of working informally ratherthan simply considering gender as a variable (Babb1990; Sage 1993; F. Wilson 1993; Dennis 1995; Hays-Mitchell 1995, 1999; Lawson 1995, 1999), in each ofthese cases women’s experiences have been privileged,and the relationship between informal work and menand masculinity remains unconsidered.

Study Design and Participants

The data presented in this article are drawn fromresearch that was conducted from January to December2002 in Buenos Aires. Although this was a unique timein the country’s history, in that unemployment ratesand rates of informal work were at record high levels,these conditions offered a remarkable opportunity togain insight into the phenomenon of informal workand its effects on gender systems. The research pre-sented here included formal, in-depth, semistructuredinterviews, complemented by informal ethnographic

conversation and observation, as well as secondarydocument analysis. The formal interviews, whichprovide the primary source of data for this article,were conducted with ninety-three people who wereworking informally in various capacities at the timeof the interview (independently and as employees,full time and part time, and in primary and secondaryoccupations). All interviewees were also cohabitatingwith a spouse or partner and had children living athome.5 In selecting interviewees, I used a purposivesample designed to provide the maximum amount ofvariety possible among informal workers. As a result,roughly half of those interviewed were women and halfwere men, and approximately 60 percent were lowerincome, and 40 percent were middle- or upper-incomeworkers.6 An effort was made to include respondentsworking in numerous occupations as well as in a varietyof locations (including the workers’ own homes, thehomes of others, the street, and formal workspacessuch as factories, offices, and schools). The sample thusincluded “classic” informal workers—such as domesticworkers, garbage scavengers, construction workers, andsmall-scale vendors—as well as those engaged in workless commonly imagined as informal, including whole-sale distributors, teachers, psychologists, social workers,musicians, and factory workers.7 The interviews rangedin length from one to three hours each and coveredtopics relating to basic household information, detailsof current work activities and work history, experiencesof and attitudes toward informal work, genderedstructure of work and home environments, attitudesof family members toward work, general and specificgender ideologies, and political participation andcommunity involvement. The names of all participantsreferred to in this article have been changed.

Two methods were used to identify research par-ticipants. First, low-income interviewees were chosenwith the help of “gatekeepers” who lived or worked inthree neighborhoods within the metropolitan area ofBuenos Aires: Barrio Inte (in the Federal District), SanLorenzo, and Del Viso. These neighborhoods were cho-sen based on their social and physical distance from thecentral area of the Federal District, as well as their his-torical, social, and economic characteristics. Potentialmiddle-income participants, all of whom lived in theFederal District, were initially identified using a snow-ball method; from this pool, interviewees were selectedaccording to the sampling criteria. Although incomewas an important factor in the sampling criteria, thiswas only one aspect of the differences in life and workexperiences of the two sets of participants. Low-income



participants, who refer to themselves and are referredto in Argentina as part of the “popular sector” or “pop-ular class” lived almost exclusively in villas miserias, orshantytowns, which generally exhibit less developed ur-ban infrastructure than the established neighborhoodsin which the middle-income residents lived. Whereaspopular sector interviewees had little formal education,with approximately half of this group not having fin-ished primary school, those with higher incomes hadall completed secondary or tertiary schooling. Popu-lar sector participants tended to be working entirelyinformally and generally had not had previous experi-ence working formally, whereas all middle-class work-ers either held formal jobs in addition to their informalwork or had previous extensive experience working for-mally. Because the very different experiences of thesetwo groups extend well beyond income, I use the termspopular sector/class and middle class to distinguish themthroughout the article.

It is important to note that although I use class asan analytical tool in this article, like gender, it mustbe approached as not only a material reality but alsoas a phenomenon with boundaries that are not fixedbut are constantly negotiated through performanceand discourse. The boundary between the popular andmiddle classes is fluid and movement between them(and movement of the boundary itself) certainly occursin this context as in others, but the division betweenthe classes that is presented in the following pages isnot simply a device used to simplify analysis; instead,it is strongly reflective of the daily reality of thoseinterviewed. Interviewees without exception easilyplaced themselves in one class group or the other andreinforced this division through their own discursivestrategies. Moreover, even those who might have beenunderstood to experience mobility between class cate-gories in material terms, such as income and occupation(especially the “new poor” among the middle classwho had experienced drastic reductions in income),maintained a strong sense of class identity, reinforcingthis division in other aspects of their lives previouslymentioned (education, place of residence, socialinteraction, etc.). As a result, workers’ experiences ofinformality and the impacts of this experience on gen-der systems were largely dependent on their class status.

Although the experience of informality varied widelyamong interview participants, especially as a functionof their class and occupation, there was a consistent un-derstanding of the meaning of informal work among allparticipants. In accordance with commonly used defini-tions of the term, informal workers frequently described

informal work as unregistered, lacking customary ben-efits, being unstable in terms of time worked or moneyearned, and being insecure or precarious. Although thespatial context in which work is performed does not inand of itself affect the degree of formality of the work,interviewees also associated informal work with partic-ular workplaces, specifically the home and the street.This association was apparent throughout interviews,both in participants’ substitution of the concept of “in-formal work” for work (generally defined) that occursin these spaces, as well as in participants’ justificationsof the informality of their work by reference to theirworkplace, as is evident in the following comments:

It is one thing if you give classes in a school, but becausethis is in my house, more than anything it is private, it isan agreement between the two of us and that is it. (An-dres, formal university administrator, informal teacher ofprivate classes)

I didn’t have any type of office, my work was completelyinformal; I worked from home. (Eloisa, psychologist)

From what I know, working in someone else’s house, theynever pay you formally. (Sara, domestic worker)

There are always, always advantages to working in thestreet. Of course you won’t have medical insurance orthings like that, like unemployment insurance, like a com-pany could offer you. (Julio, informal taxi driver)

The advantage to working in a factory or in an office isthat . . . you have benefits and all of that working in a fac-tory that you don’t have in other places. (Surray, makesfood to sell on the street)

Thus, although lack of registration and lack of ben-efits are by definition characteristics of informal workthat distinguish it from formal work, workers themselvesidentify other characteristics as well, including the in-stability and insecurity of informal work as well as itsassociation with particular places.8

Normative Manifestations of Masculinityand Femininity

In the remainder of this article, I draw on the expe-riences and perceptions of informal workers to discussthe ways that the informalization of work affected theinterplay between gender norms and practices of bothmen and women during the height of the economiccrisis in Argentina. I highlight the distinction betweennorms and practices in an effort to avoid an approachthat focuses solely on “gender roles,” as this approachhas the potential to neglect the way that these “roles”


166 Whitson

are a product of both larger social discourses and indi-vidual performances, two elements of the gender sys-tem that might themselves be in contradiction (J. W.Scott 1988; Gutmann 1996; Stolen 1996). Regardingnormative manifestations of gender, the results of thisresearch confirm those of other studies in Latin Amer-ica (Fuller 2003; Latapı 2003; Viveros Vigoya 2001),suggesting that among popular sector workers, the tra-ditional gender norms of the masculine provider andfeminine mother were still strongly upheld, whereasamong middle-class workers, these norms continued toexist but exhibited greater flexibility.

For the popular sector workers who participated inthis research, the normative understandings of mas-culinity and femininity were most clear in the relationalconstruction of the masculine symbol of the provider inopposition to the feminine symbol of the mother. Thisrelational construction is evident in the way that peo-ple framed answers to their questions regarding the roleof the man in the family in terms of the activity of bothpartners.

I think that the man is the one that should work. If thewoman works, it should be out of necessity, because thewoman should be with her kids, watching them grow,making sure that they choose the right path. (Andrea, do-mestic worker)

I’ve prohibited my wife from working, well, not “prohib-ited,” but I think that it’s my obligation to bring homeeverything that may be needed in the house and addition-ally, leaving the kids in a day care is bad, if you ask me.(Julio, informal taxi driver)

As these brief comments suggest, both men and womenfelt that supporting the family through work outside ofthe home was the primary obligation of a man, whereascaring for the home and children was the primary re-sponsibility of the woman.

Although these traditional norms were present inboth the popular sectors and the middle class, theywere much more flexible among middle-class workers.Whereas workers from the popular sectors expressedthese perspectives in an unconditional manner, thosefrom the middle class often qualified the “ideal” genderrelations according to context-specific factors. Regard-ing the role of the mother, many in the middle classagreed that work outside of the home was fine as longas it was part time, and others regularly qualified theircomments to take into account the age of the children,arguing that only during the first few months or yearsof a child’s life was it crucial for a woman to be at homewith her children. There was some malleability in

the perceived normative manifestations of femininityamong the middle class, but ideals of masculinity weremuch more rigid across class lines, as men and womenin all classes referred to the obligation and value ofpaid work and the concomitant responsibility, dignity,and authority within the family as important aspectsof masculinity. It was, however, possible to distinguishslight differences in the way in which those in themiddle class justified this ideal in comparison to thosein the popular sectors. In particular, whereas mostpopular sector respondents cited social or biologicaldifferences perceived as “natural” to justify traditionalmasculine norms, there was a tendency among those inthe middle class, especially those with higher educationin psychology or other social sciences, to view thisideal as culturally and historically specific. As Rodolfo,a photojournalist and photography teacher, explained,“It seems to me that we don’t just get to go out and dowhatever we want, we do what we’ve been assigned todo, both men and women.”

Negotiating Femininity in the PopularSectors

Although workers in the popular sector in Argentinacontinue to hold strongly traditional gender norms thatassociate women with mothering and men with provi-sion, it is within this group that family livelihood strate-gies during the crisis most challenged these norms. Thissituation becomes clear when considering the relativecontribution to household income of men and womenin this group. As Table 1 indicates, in less than halfof all popular sector households that participated inthis research were men primary income earners (earn-ing at least 60 percent of the household income); indual-income households, this number drops to less thanone quarter.9 Among those interviewed, women’s high

Table 1. Contribution of men and women interviewed tototal household income by class

Popular MiddleType of household class class Total

Single-income householdsMen are the sole income earners 9 0 9

Dual-income households 47 37 84Men are primary income earners 10 28 38Women are even contributors or

primary income earners37 9 46

Total households 56 37 93



levels of participation in the labor force as well as theirhigh levels of income contribution in comparison tomen’s both suggest that the performance of the stay-at-home mother and breadwinning father were beingchallenged for both men and women.

Concurring with the findings of researchers in othercontexts (White 1994; Lawson 1995, 1999; Tiano2001), for women in the popular class, the tensionresulting from the incongruence of the feminine normof the mother and its daily practice in the lives ofindividuals was largely negotiated through an incorpo-ration of paid work into the performance of mothering.As Vanesa, a domestic worker with whom I spoke,commented, “Why do I like working? So that I can seethat my children are well.” In this particular context,the crisis conditions served to facilitate incorporation ofwaged work into the ideal of mothering as heightenedlevels of economic need provided an environment thatsupported the notion that feminine caretaking couldoccur through economic provision. Simply becausewomen were able to justify paid work through referenceto their traditional caretaking activities, however, doesnot mean that the practice of one does not complicatethe practice of the other. In the case of women workersin the popular sector, my analysis suggests that thecharacteristics that distinguish informal work fromformal work in the Argentine context—in particularan association of this work with the home—mightfacilitate an incorporation of paid work into thefeminine performance of the mother, further mediatingthe tension that might exist between this normativeand practical manifestation of femininity.

The primary way that this mediation occurred wasthrough an attempt to maintain the connection ofwomen and their work to the domestic sphere, eitherphysically or symbolically, which might have been moreeasily achieved in the context of informal work. Thisconnection was facilitated at a basic level through thehigh degree of occupational sex segregation within theinformal work of those in the popular sector, result-ing in a concentration of women in occupations asso-ciated with domestic or caretaking activities. Table 2indicates that according to the experiences of informalworkers who participated in this research, the organiza-tional structure of informal work in the popular sectoris markedly gendered: It is highly sex-segregated by oc-cupation, mirroring and possibly exacerbating patternsfound in the formal workplace in Argentina (Di Marco1988; Gonzalez 1990; Garcia de Fanelli 1991; Feijooand Nari 1996; Forni and Roldan 1996; Arriagada1998; Abramo and Valenzuela 2001, 2005).10 Strik-

Table 2. Sex composition of participants’ informaloccupations by gender and class

Number of men Number of women

Sex compositionof occupation

Popularclass

Middleclass

Popularclass

Middleclass

Women only — — 24 6Men only 24 11 — —Mixed: Family-based

enterprise9 1 14 1

Mixed: Not family-basedenterprise

— 14 — 15

ingly, however, the pattern of occupational sex segre-gation among informal workers differs by class, as occu-pations are segregated by sex to a much greater degreein the popular class than in the middle class.11

The connection of the informal work of popular sec-tor women to the domestic sphere might have alsobeen supported by choice not only of occupation butof workplace, as women frequently based decisions re-garding work location on gendered norms that establishthem as caretakers of the family. Although both maleand female interview participants worked within andoutside of their homes, women consistently referredto their children as a primary factor in their deci-sions regarding their workplace. The decision of Sil-via is characteristic of the experience of many of thesewomen:

I put a lot of effort into starting this kiosk, because I hadreally left my kids uncared for when I was working as adomestic servant. . . . I mean, you know, one of the onlyopportunities that I had to work from home, to be withmy kids, was to put up a kiosk, and I’ve left my kids withother people since they were really little, and now, youknow, I want to be able to spend more time with them. SoI chose it for this, so I could be at home and be with mykids, and work at the same time. (Silvia, runs a kiosk outof her home)

Additionally, many other women who did not workfrom home also mentioned that they wanted to workas close to home as possible to be near their children.Thus, although not all women worked in the home,and not all wanted to, for a large number of women theselection of workplace was a crucial component in theirgender performance.12

To understand the implications on gender perfor-mances of choosing home as a workplace, it is criticalto recognize that home is not only a physical space but aspace “invested with meanings, emotions, experiences,


168 Whitson

and relationships that lie at the heart of human life”(Blunt and Varley 2004, 3). As feminist geographersand others have argued, the home represents the mate-rial manifestation of the domestic private sphere, whichis associated with the family, particular interests ratherthan universal concerns, and leisure as opposed to work(Massey and McDowell 1994; Davidoff 1998; McDow-ell 1999). Although feminist research has sought tochallenge these dualisms (Blunt and Dowling 2006), asDomosh and Seager (2001, 33) asserted, the definingfeature of the home continues to be its separation fromwork, as homes are both “ideologically and physicallyconstructed as if work did not exist.” This conceptualseparation of home and work both draws on and sup-ports the feminization of this space.

In the context of informal work in Argentina, al-though work location does not in and of itself affectthe degree of formality of the work, as mentioned pre-viously, research respondents strongly associated workdone in the home with informal work, drawing on thisconstruction of the home as a feminized space of leisure.To the extent that this association in turn resulted inless formalization of work, women choosing to workin the home might have been, in effect, making a de-cision to work informally. In this way, although thewomen I spoke to were thus not choosing to work in-formally because they felt it would make them bettermothers, many were choosing to work in their homes—in many cases functionally limiting their employmentoptions to informal work—precisely to enable their per-formance of this norm. The crisis conditions reinforcedthis decision-making process, as women felt that, be-cause work opportunities were scarce in all parts of thecity, they had little to lose by working informally in ornear their homes.

Researchers studying home-based work in the NorthAmerican context have found that professional home-workers tend to reinforce the distinction between thedomestic sphere and their paid work to negotiate theconflicting expectations of work and home (Mirchan-dani 1998, 2000; Berke 2003), but this is generally notthe case among home-based enterprises in poor neigh-borhoods in less developed countries in Latin Americaand beyond (Miraftab 1996; Kellett and Tipple 2000;Gough and Kellett 2001). Rather, as Chen, Sebstad,and O’Connell (1999) argued, home-based work amongwomen is often seen as an extension of unpaid house-work. Indeed, among popular sector women workingfrom home in Argentina, the home–work tension wasmediated by minimizing this distinction; not only waswork done in the home naturalized as informal, but

when it was not professional in nature or when it hadother characteristics strongly associated with informal-ity (such as being unstable or inconsistent), it was fre-quently not considered work at all. This disassociationoccurred even when the same activity, performed out-side of the home in a formal setting, would be con-sidered work. Respondents made this distinction withactivities such as cooking; cleaning; attending a kioskor vegetable stand; selling clothes, food, or cosmet-ics; and personal services such as massage, depilation,hairdressing, and teaching, as the following commentssuggest.

No, no, no, my wife doesn’t work. She’s had, how can Idescribe it, she’s had some odd jobs or handicrafts that shetakes care of, but always near the house, just a few blocksaway, or if not, actually within my house, some clothes tosew or some little task, or a tortilla to make, or somethinglike that. (Julio, informal taxi driver)

No, I stopped working. I had worked as a domestic worker,but I stopped working when I put up the kiosk [located inher house]. Then I just devoted myself to my house, to mykids, and to attending the kiosk. (Silvia, runs a kiosk outof her home)

I did depilation at home, but it wasn’t really a job, it wasjust something to do, you know? (Carmen Lucia, works ina salon doing depilation)

In each of these cases, the domestic location of this in-formal work effectively rendered it a nonwork activity,further facilitating reconciliation between paid workand the feminine norm of the mother.

The connection of informal work to the domesticsphere also occurred when women were not working indomestic space, through a connection of informal workto family relations. This was most evident among pop-ular sector women working in family-based enterprises.As Table 2 indicates, all of the women in the popularsector who were not working in highly sex-segregatedoccupations were working in familial enterprises. Yeteven for women not working in family-based enter-prises, a symbolic association of work with the domesticsphere can be established as women discursively framedtheir working relationships in familial terms. The com-ments of Natacha exemplify this tendency to discussinformal employers in familial terms. Natacha recallsthat when she first came to Buenos Aires at eighteenyears old and began working as a domestic servant, herpatrona took the place of her mother:

She loved me like a daughter. She taught me everything,because I knew nothing. I didn’t know how to speak



properly, I didn’t know how to hold a spoon, things thatmy mother never taught me, she taught me. . . . I reallyowe her a lot. I love her too, in my own way I love her.She is my mother. Of course she paid me as well, but thatwas minimal.

Although the circumstances of a long-term, live-in do-mestic relationship like Natacha’s certainly intensifiedthe familial attachment that she felt toward her em-ployer, this tendency to cast employment relations infamilial terms was evident in the comments of otherinformal workers as well. This was especially the casefor domestic workers, who constantly repeated phrasessuch as “I feel like I’m in my own home,” and “theytreat me like family”; however, this tendency was alsoevident, albeit to a lesser extent, in the comments of in-formal workers in other occupations. For example, thecomment of Veronica, who works informally as a janitorat a bank, illustrates that she considers her employersat the bank to be like family, as she says:

The advantage of working informally is that you havean important relationship with the people (you workfor) . . . it’s like they are my family. There’s more of anemotional part to it.

In these instances, the paternalistic nature of interclassrelations (especially in the context of domestic work)reinforces the association of popular sector women’swork with familial relationships.

The Challenge of Masculinity in thePopular Sector

The relative levels of household income within thepopular sectors cited earlier, as well as the high levelsof female labor force participation, not only point tothe need to negotiate the tensions present betweenwomen’s work and the feminine norm of the mother,but they also point toward the difficulty that existed dur-ing the crisis situation for popular sector men to achievea successful performance of the provider ideal. As previ-ously discussed, the activity of paid work, ideally outsideof the home, is crucial to the masculine ideal of theprovider. Yet, as recent research on masculinity has in-dicated, not all work is equal when it comes to support-ing a hegemonic masculinity. For example, McDowell(2002, 2003a, 2003b) and Nayak (2003) discussed theshift to service work for men whose masculinity has beenconstructed around the physicality of industrial work intraditional manufacturing regions, whereas Collinson(1992), Collinson and Hearn (1996), Cheng (1996a),

and Hodgson (2003) addressed how the discursiveconstruction of office work of different types employsand challenges discourses of masculinity in a variety ofcontexts. In this section, I focus on the way that theinformality of popular sector men’s work affected theirability to successfully perform the provider norm.

The experiences of the informal workers with whomI spoke suggest two answers to the question of whetherthe practice of informal work (as opposed to formalwork) constituted a valid performance of the providernorm for men in the popular sector during the crisisin Argentina. First, a number of respondents arguedthat any type of work—informal or formal—was morevalued than no work, as the antithesis of the providerideal is the man who “sits at home doing nothing,” aphrase that was used by many respondents, both maleand female, to describe what men are doing who are notemployed in paid labor outside of the home. A numberof respondents even specified archetypal informal jobsto emphasize this sentiment:

If my husband were any other man, he would have workeddoing anything, anything! I’ve told him to get a little cartand go collect paper [for recycling] or pick trash, but hedoesn’t want to, seriously. It’s offensive! Even I would doit if I didn’t have a job. He doesn’t even try to do anything.(Rosa, domestic worker)

My husband knew that from the moment we started afamily he had the responsibility of bringing home food forour family, of doing everything to provide for the family.Maybe he can’t find a steady job, but he goes all overlooking. He won’t rest a minute until he finds something.And if he finds an odd job for one or two days, at least hecan bring home something. He even used to go out intothe streets to sell the homemade bread that I would makehere and that my neighbor would make, but now no oneis buying. (Miriam, makes food and crafts from her home,sells small items to her neighbors, and goes to the bartermarkets)

Additionally, as Miriam’s comment suggests, the cri-sis context might have played a role in contributingto the acceptance of work that might otherwise nothave been viewed as a legitimate performance of theprovider norm. Thus, even when men were unsuccess-ful in finding stable or formal employment, the ef-fort that informal employment signified was—amongsome—interpreted during the crisis as an acceptableperformance of the dominant masculine ideal of theprovider.

For many, however, the practice of informal workchallenged the performance of the masculine provider


170 Whitson

role, primarily by calling into question whether theactivity being engaged in actually constituted work.Because the extent to which informal work was readas work varied according to both the perspective ofthe individual and the characteristics of the work, insome instances, informal work was considered “real”enough to constitute a valid performance of masculin-ity, whereas in others instances it was not. Similar totheir female counterparts, for men in the popular sector,this was manifest most extremely for those working inunstable jobs and for those working within the home.As the following comment from Norma Raquel regard-ing her husband’s work in the kiosk run out of oneroom of their house suggests, informal work performedat home by nonprofessionals was frequently not viewedas work:

My husband isn’t working now. He was working in a gasstation but now he’s not working, he just attends the kiosk.

Natacha, whose husband works informally running avegetable stand from their house, also does not considerthis to be a valid way of providing for their family, andas a result, she questions her husband’s masculinity.

He’s lazy. He doesn’t know what is important. He attendsthe vegetable stand, he takes a siesta—something that Ican’t do, but oh well! What he should do is go out and geta job because a man who doesn’t work doesn’t know whatlife is, doesn’t know the cold, the heat, nothing.

When asked if he supports her decision to work, shereplies, “He has no opinion because it’s not his placeto decide; I’m the one that decides because I’m the onewho goes out and works.” In both of these comments theidea of leaving home to work (salir a trabajar) is criticalfor Natacha’s evaluation of her husband’s masculineperformance.

Whereas in this circumstance the informal work wasnot a valid performance in part because of where it oc-curred, for other men, the instability that characterizedtheir informal work makes fulfilling the expectationsof the provider difficult. Similar to work done withinthe home, jobs that were unstable or inconsistent interms of time spent or income were often not referredto by respondents as work, as evident in the followingcomments:

It’s been three years since my husband has been working.He’s always doing odd jobs, but before three years ago hehad stable work, which he still doesn’t have now. (Silvia,runs a kiosk out of her home)

I’m not working now, no. It’s been two months now thatI’ve been without work, because I don’t have a perma-

nent job, you know. I’m always doing odd jobs, painting,construction, selling things . . . I get by doing everything.(Maximo, does odd jobs)

Although many people might agree that unstable,temporary, and part-time work are not ideal types ofwork, these characteristics described the majority ofthe informal work undertaken by men in the popu-lar sector during the crisis period. As a result, muchinformal work that occurred during this time was notviewed as an actual work activity but rather as a subsis-tence activity carried out because of a lack of (stable)work.

Sixto, who was employed in short-term constructionjobs, described the way that the instability of his in-formal work made it impossible to fulfill his role as aprovider and, like Natacha, explains that this changedthe right to authority that he had traditionally held inhis home and community.

Sometimes my son comes to me now and he says, “Dad, Ineed a pair of shoes.” And imagine if you can’t do anything,if you don’t even have food to eat. And we don’t, rightnow . . . I’m not joking, it is horrible, because right now,we men in Argentina are ruined, and we’re all fathers offamilies and we’re all workers. . . . My bosses are supposedto pay me benefits, but I don’t get any. But you just haveto take what they give you, because what else can you do?Now we’re like animals, they just give us scraps and expectus to accept it. Before, we had some say, but now everyonetells us what to do. I used to work, to be in charge in myhome, now it’s the reverse. Now the women work and theytell us what to do. We used to tell them what to do andnow they tell us, “Do this, do that,” and if you’re a man, ithurts. We used to be the men, always.

In this passage, Sixto explicitly links the informality ofhis work first to his inability to provide for the fam-ily, then to his place of authority in the household,and ultimately to his identity as a man. This was astrong theme that ran throughout both my formal inter-views and informal conversations, as many Argentinesfelt that informal work and the instability associatedwith it were especially difficult for men, as they werethe ones expected to have formal (or at least stable)work and to provide for their families. The sense thatwomen, through working formally or informally, hadtaken over their roles and left men with nothing tocontribute to the family was pervasive. As one mancommented to me, “I feel completely depressed fromnot having good work and from everything else that isgoing on these days, it’s a mess. I feel completely uselesswith everything that is happening, even though it isn’t



my fault” (Lautaro, works in odd jobs and as a garbagescavenger).

Interestingly, the feelings of uselessness, inadequacy,and loss of power are consistent with results of researchon masculinity and unemployment, where unemployedmen were found to have anxiety about domesticprovision and felt disempowered and emasculated asa result (Connell 1995; Willott and Griffin 1996;Haywood and Mac an Ghaill 2003). The key distinc-tion in this research is that the men in this study werenot technically without work. In spite of this, however,their experiences and the sentiments they expressedwere strikingly similar to those of unemployed men,suggesting that in many cases informal work, like un-employment, does not constitute a valid performanceof work and as a result does not enable men to suc-cessfully perform the norm of the provider. Thus, asMcDowell (2003b, 833) suggested, “it is work, albeitwork that is ‘suitable’ for a man, that confers and con-firms the central attributes of masculinity.” The strictdegree of formality of work (in terms of registration andbenefits received) did not, however, seem to be the fea-ture that made work a “suitable” performance. Rather,characteristics associated with informal work—in par-ticular instability and domesticity—were the crucial as-pects that disconnected this work from the providerideal.

This masculine ideal of the provider was so per-vasive across both gender and class lines that I donot hesitate to label it dominant or hegemonic inthis context. Yet another distinct performance of mas-culinity emerged as well during interviews with pop-ular sector men, which for many served as a meansto enable a masculine performance, albeit of a dif-ferent nature. As with femininities, the idea thatmultiple masculinities exist is widely accepted and anumber of authors have argued for the recognitionof time- and place-dependent dominant masculin-ities, which are constructed in relation to subor-dinate masculinities (Connell 1995; Collinson andHearn 1996; Cheng 1996a; C. Jackson 2000; Gutmann2003b; Haywood and Mac an Ghaill 2003; McDowell2003b). As the discourse that emerged from in-formal workers surrounding the provider masculin-ity centered around issues of obligation, the valueof work, breadwinning, and authority within thehome, an alternate discourse simultaneously emergedthat related masculinity to independence, autonomy,freedom, mobility, and the outdoors, all character-istics that have at different times and in differentplaces been associated with masculine performances

(P. Jackson 1991; Collinson and Hearn 1996; Fuller2000, 2003; Domosh and Seager 2001; Hodgson2003).13

Among the informal workers with whom I spoke,there was a strong sentiment that either one of thereasons they chose to work informally, or one of thebenefits of doing so, was the sense of independence andfreedom that this provides. This feeling was expressedfrequently in the statement “No one tells me what todo,” and was commonly supported by claims that “Ihave no boss,” “I can start and stop working when Iwant,” and “The work is my own.” This alternativemasculine performance also rests on the location of thework being performed; it was enabled by manual laborthat took place in the street or open air, as the followingcomments suggest:

I’m a person that needs to remake myself in order to keepgoing and I don’t like to lock myself up, you know . . . forthis exact reason I chose to be an informal taxi driver(remisero) a few years ago, because you’re always in thestreet and you aren’t shut in. For me the street is better.I wouldn’t feel comfortable working in a supermarket orsomeplace like that, you’re watched over all the time andtold what to do. No, I don’t like to be told what to do:“You, come here, do this, go there.” No, I like to be theone to tell myself what to do. For this reason I chose towork in the street, I chose it because I like it. (Julio, infor-mal taxi driver)

I like to work on the land, in gardens, cutting grass, any-where outside. And aside from that, any type of manualwork that you can do yourself, with no one above you, youdon’t have to work a set schedule. I also like working inthe street, I like the liberty of it. (Marcelo, runs a kioskout of his home and does odd jobs)

It is important to note that the practice of infor-mal work does not constitute an alternative perfor-mance of masculinity for all men at all times but rathershould be understood as one potential performance thatmight exist simultaneously with other dominant or sub-ordinated masculinities, both within Argentine soci-ety as a whole as well as within individual men. Inthis way, this version of masculinity draws on char-acteristics similar to those that have been attributedto subordinated working-class or protest masculinities(Connell 1995; McDowell 2002, 2003b), which alsostress physicality, independence, and street space in cre-ating hypermasculine identities (Collinson and Hearn1996; Willott and Griffin 1996; Fuller 2003; Nayak2003). As such, this alternative masculinity might beadopted in circumstances in which men are unable to


172 Whitson

perform the more highly valued hegemonic masculin-ity of the provider, as was the case for many men inthe popular sector during the crisis in Argentina. Yetalthough multiple performances of masculinity mightbe identified, one rarely supplants the other, as the on-going performance of gender for any individual mightbe done differently in different time and place con-texts according to the constraints faced in the moment.Additionally, as Laurie’s (2005) discussion of “heroic”and “vulnerable” masculinities suggests, competing ver-sions of masculinity are rarely fixed but are constantlyevolving and, as a result, a single activity or discoursecan be drawn on to support the performance of both.In this way, the “vulnerable” masculinity associated, inthis case, with the poverty of the popular classes as it isexpressed in the activity of informal work may easily berecast or simulcast as “heroic”—through an attempt atprovidership—during crisis conditions.

Conforming to Gender Norms: WorkingInformally in the Middle Class

Just as the implications of the informalization of workdiffered for men and women within the popular sec-tor, it also impacted middle-class workers differentlyfrom their popular sector counterparts. This is due inpart to the differences in gender norms between themiddle and popular classes. As discussed previously, al-though traditional gender norms that identify womenwith mothering and men with provision were held inboth the popular and middle classes, these norms wereless pronounced in middle-class families. This was es-pecially the case with regard to the gendered norm ofthe mother, which, although it continued to exist inthe middle class, allowed for more flexibility regardingwomen’s presence in the home and constant caretakingof the children. For this reason, middle-class women’spaid work did not serve as a challenge to the femininenorm of the mother in the same way that it did in thepopular sector.

To the extent that the practice of paid work did chal-lenge the ideal of the mother for middle-class womenwho participated in this research, as in the popular sec-tor, the tendency to frame women’s paid work withinthe context of mothering and caregiving also mighthave helped to alleviate this tension. Among those inthe middle class, many expressed the idea that paid workwas not incompatible with the feminine performance ofthe mother, as the woman could achieve a level of per-sonal development that would allow her to “give more”

to her children and family, as the following commentsindicate.

I personally think that a woman should stay at home untilher kids are three years old and then they can be put in aday care and not suffer too much from it. I also think that itis fundamental for women to work, because if the womandoesn’t work, she won’t grow personally. . . . So I agreethat women should work, but in reasonable amounts—you shouldn’t be gone all day, because this would hurt yourfamily and your kids. But at the same time, it’s good forthem to see their mom getting ready to go to work, theywill feel proud. (Lili, formal lawyer’s assistant, informalcosmetics salesperson)

Really, I don’t only think that it isn’t bad that Luisa works,I actually think that both for her and for the family, it’s agood thing. I think that it is as much for me as it is for her. Ifsomeone spends a lot of time inside, you know, with min-imal contact with the world, you become impoverished.And the more you are able to bring back to the family, themore everyone is enriched. (Rodolfo, photojournalist andphotography teacher)

In this way, although the reasons for working were notcast exclusively in a discourse of helping the family eco-nomically during times of need (as among the popularsectors), a woman’s ability to give to her family in otherways was seen as one benefit of paid work.

Additionally, as with the experience of women inthe popular sector, characteristics associated with in-formal work in particular—including its connectionto the home and its flexibility—might have served toease the tension that continued to exist between thepractice of paid work and the norm of the mother amongmiddle-class women. Like popular-sector women, manymiddle-class women chose to work from or near hometo be with or close to their children and in making thischoice potentially increased the likelihood that theywould be working informally. As Lidia, an informalcosmetics salesperson, commented,

I am a huge fan of my home! Since I left my career [medicalschool] to be able to be with my kids and to take care ofthem during their infancy and early childhood, I knowthat I would prefer a thousand times over to work fromhome as I do now.

In addition, Lidia, like other middle-class women, citedthe flexibility of her informal work as enabling her tomeet the demands of the gendered performance of themother. She comments, “Given my current situation,with really small kids, and the economic situation astight as it is, the advantage of this job is the flexibilityof the schedule, it is being able to do what I want with no



boss looking down on me.” This flexibility was charac-teristic of the informal work of those in the middle classin Argentina; according to my sample, they were muchmore likely to work independently than were those inthe popular sector who were more commonly informalemployees without the same degree of control over theirwork schedules. As all of the women in the middle classwith whom I spoke worked informally either as inde-pendent workers or in a contracted relationship, theywere able to set the hours of their own work accord-ing to their needs, thus enabling them to perform thetraditional mother role more successfully.

Although workers in the middle class held less tra-ditional gender norms for women than did those inthe popular sector, the normative expectations for menwere much more similar in both groups. Nonetheless,middle-class men were able to perform this genderednorm more easily during the crisis period, thus leadingto less tension overall for men between the practiceof informal work and the normative manifestations ofgender, due in large part to the marked dissimilarityin the two groups’ experiences of informal work at thehousehold level. First, the middle-class men and womeninterviewed for this research were much more likely tohave family livelihood strategies that enabled men tocontinue to be primary income earners than were thosein popular sector households. Whereas only one fifthof men in the dual-income, popular sector householdsinterviewed for this study were primary income earn-ers, in approximately three quarters of the householdsof middle-class participants, men were primary incomeearners (see Table 1). Although the performance ofprovider masculinity is not limited to earning income,as it also frequently incorporates notions of the controlover resources, homosocial activity, and participationin the public sphere (Willott and Griffin 1996; Cheng1996b; Hodgson 2003; McDowell 2003a), it is arguablya crucial aspect of this performance. The experience ofErnesto, with whose story this article began, illustratesthe importance of income earning. He comments thatsince the time his wife began working and he stoppedworking formally, decisions regarding finances generatequite a bit of disagreement. He explains:

This comes from a history of me being the provider inthe family, it was as if I exercised greater power in deci-sion making—I was the one with the right to decide. . . . Ilike being in control and having this power . . . so this ob-viously generates conflicts because we don’t agree, so Idecide what to do with my money and she decides whatto do with hers.

For the majority of middle-class men, however, theircontinued status as primary income earners enabledthem to maintain a successful performance of this normin spite of changes in working relations caused by thecrisis conditions.

Additionally, whereas popular-sector men’s informalwork was almost always their only source of income(with only five out of twenty-six working both formallyand informally), for the majority of men in the middleclass (fifteen out of nineteen), informal work was onlyone part of a larger livelihood strategy that includedformal work. As a result, although their informal workmight also have been characterized by instability, in-security, or work from home—the characteristics thatfor men in the popular sector challenged a masculineperformance—middle-class men’s work was generallyundertaken in a context in which they were also work-ing in relatively secure jobs that provided benefits out-side of the home. Within the context of Latin America,this is not the norm; rather, the ability of men in themiddle class to successfully engage in this type of mixedeconomy is the outcome of a history of high rates of for-mal work among Argentina’s large middle class, madepossible in large part by Peronist policies, which, wellinto the 1970s, served to integrate small-scale produc-tion formally into the country’s growth model throughprotective labor legislation and institutions to regulatework (Carpio and Novacovsky 1999). Indeed, ratherthan being a characteristic of the Argentine economy,informal work only became commonplace after the lib-eralization policies of the military dictatorship in the1980s and the flexibilization and deregulation of thelabor market that occurred in the 1990s (Barbieri 1996;Cerrutti 2000; Olmedo and Murray 2002).14 Moreover,once rates of informal work began to rise, middle-classmen were the last group to be affected, as low-incomeworkers and female workers were more likely to enterinto this “feminized” economy than were middle-classmen who had traditionally held formal jobs (Lopez andMonza 1995). Although this unique history is evidentin the current livelihood strategies of middle-class men,it is significant that this group is now actively engagingin informal work, albeit within the context of a mixedeconomy, as it supports the argument that formal workis becoming an ideal—rather than a reality—for an in-creasing number of people in all sectors of society.

Finally, the informal work of middle-class men wasnot limited to short-term, subsistence-oriented activi-ties undertaken to provide income in a time of crisis, aswas the case with men in the popular sector. Rather, itwas equally likely to be the practice of a profession in


174 Whitson

which they had trained and with which they stronglyidentified. Although the crisis conditions might haverequired both popular- and middle-class workers to di-versify their livelihood strategies and work simultane-ously in multiple jobs, for middle-class men this lessfrequently led to the abandonment of a profession, asit did among the majority of popular-sector workerswhose occupational choices in the crisis context weremuch more constrained. The experience of Nestor, whoworked informally as an electrician and doing surveys,and recently earned his degree to work as a psychologist,best exemplifies this shift. Whereas he considers work-ing as an electrician and practicing psychology both tobe work, as he is trained in both areas, he describes thesurvey work as follows:

Well, it isn’t really work. It just . . . sometimes it serves tokeep me busy, to raise our income a little. In some way itwas also a way out, in the sense that it helped me morethan anything to keep busy and to get out of the depressionof this situation.

In contrast, Nestor describes teaching informal psychol-ogy classes very differently:

It isn’t a question of income. But what it does offer is aspace of insertion, of ties, of staying connected to othersin our profession.

In this case, neither informal job earned Nestor a stable,significant income, but as teaching was seen as the prac-tice of a profession, this work was legitimized in anotherway, enabling a provider performance. The difference inthe way that these two types of informal work (profes-sional vs. short-term subsistence-oriented work) wereviewed by the men themselves often became evidentvery early on in the interviews, as, while recounting la-bor histories, men would only describe their professionalwork until explicitly asked about other work. My con-versation with Francisco exemplifies this. When askedwhat type of work he was currently doing, he replied,“I’m a musician, and I work as a musician. I direct choirs,I direct musical productions, I have a duet, and I teachmusic classes. . . . I really like this work, I really enjoydoing it.” Later in the interview, when I inquired as towhether he had any other type of work, he responded:

In this country it is very difficult to make a living frommusic, so I’ve had to do other types of work, too. I inventall sorts of work in order to move forward with my funda-mental work, which is music. Right now I’m doing someindependent sales work just to help me get by.

Because of the professional nature of many middle-classmen’s informal work, it is seen—in Francisco’s words—

as “fundamental work” and as such represents a legiti-mate performance of the provider norm, even in circum-stances in which this work was also unstable, insecure,or took place within the home.

It is important to note that, as with popular-classmen, the independent and flexible nature of middle-class men’s informal work also contributed to its abilityto enable a masculine performance. Whereas I arguethat among popular-class men these characteristics ofinformal work enabled an alternative performance tothe provider masculinity, in the case of men in themiddle class, the same characteristics also served to en-hance provider performance by reinforcing notions ofpower and control over one’s own working condition,as the following comment suggests:

This job [electrician] has the advantage of independence,in terms of how I organize my time and the decisions Imake. I really can’t stand it when people tell me what todo. It’s not so much about what I have to do, it’s about acertain relationship with the company where you have nodecision whatsoever about what you do yourself. You’rea machine, and that’s it. The computer is there and youfollow what it says and you are both at the same level.(Nestor, electrician, psychologist, and survey taker)

Reading the same characteristic of masculinity differ-ently for two different groups of men reinforces thenotion that gender performances are not only spatiallyand temporally contingent but are also a product of in-tersectionality, reliant on other aspects of the identityof the performer for meaning. Within the context of theinformalization of middle-class men’s work in an envi-ronment in which this type of work has traditionallybeen associated with women or with popular-class men,the independent nature of middle-class men’s informalwork is (re)cast in a positive way that serves to legit-imize the masculinity of this work. As Hooper (2000)and Laurie (2005) argued, the constantly shifting inter-pretation of elements of gendered identity is not only aprocess of marking differences between men and womenbut also between “different groups of men as they jostlefor position and control; articulating and re-articulatingthe relationship between masculinity and power as theygo” (Hooper 2000, 60).

Conclusion

Overall, it is difficult to conclude simply that thepractice of informal work, as one component of thebroader economic changes occurring in Argentina in2002, clearly and in all cases either destabilized or



reinforced traditional gender norms in Argentine so-ciety. Rather, the ways that informal work enabled andconstrained gendered performances were complex, vari-able, and contingent. The results presented in this ar-ticle nonetheless suggest that the effects of informalwork on individuals and families cannot be fully under-stood without taking into consideration their effects ongendered performances.

This research highlights the importance of the ge-ographic context in affecting the way that actions onthe part of different individuals can be framed as part ofgendered performances and thus incorporated into theproduction of the gender system itself. At the nationalscale, the crisis conditions that Argentina experiencedafter a long period of economic decline served to providelogic for practices that failed to conform to normativeexpectations for both men and women. At a more in-timate scale, the geographic context that distinguisheshouse and home from streets and formal work settingscould both facilitate and hinder the incorporation ofspecific activities into accepted gender performances.Thus, although both men’s and women’s informal workmay take place within the home, the geography ofthe home is used to ease tensions between women’spractice of informal work and gender norms, and itsimultaneously complicates provider performances formen.

The results of this study also highlight another waythat the experience of economic change differs for dif-ferent groups of people within a single local context:Not only are men and women affected differently as aresult of their different positioning within the gendersystem, but people of the same sex positioned differentlywithin the socioeconomic structure also experience theimpacts of economic change on the gender system indistinct ways. Although this has long been argued tobe the case with the economic impacts of restructuring,this research suggests that it is also the case when con-sidering the noneconomic impacts of economic change.Moreover, although many material aspects of informalwork may be similar among workers of different classes(with people in all classes working for little pay in unsta-ble or insecure informal jobs), their experiences mightnonetheless have different implications on gender per-formances as class differentiation continues to be re-inforced through distinct discursive strategies used toframe and interpret informal work. What popular-sectorwomen interpreted as insecurity, middle-class womensaw as flexibility, and what for popular-class men wasdescribed as freedom from, for middle-class men be-came control over. Recognition of this distinction en-

ables an understanding of the way that gender perfor-mances are to a large part rooted in performances of class(rather than simply a reflection of material difference),highlighting the intersectionality of these two axes ofidentity.

Overall, although these findings are consistent withresearch done on economic change and gender in othercontexts, they also bring to light issues not frequentlyaddressed or acknowledged in other research. First,the results presented here indicate that althoughgender norms are changing slightly among some groupsof society, gender performances on the whole aremuch more malleable, changing more in response toeconomic crisis. This result highlights the importanceof considering both norms and performances whenlooking at the effects of economic change on gendersystems. Some researchers (Sautu et al. 2000; Cerrutti2002; Wainerman 2002) have argued that economicchanges in Argentina have resulted in shifting genderroles by considering changes only in people’s behavioras it relates to productive activities, but when consider-ing gender norms as an important component of theseroles, the long-term nature of these changes becomesless clear. The disjuncture between normative genderexpectations and performances exhibited among somegroups in this analysis calls into question the extentto which the gender system has been transformed:If normative gender expectations are not affected bychanges in economic structure, it is possible (althoughunknown at this point) that changes in the behavior ofmen and women could simply reflect short-term eco-nomic survival strategies that might persist only as longas they are economically necessary. Additionally, whenconsidering that middle-class gender performanceswere somewhat more traditional (at least consideringincome contribution to household) than those in thepopular sector in spite of less rigid normative expecta-tions, it becomes clear that although these two elementsof the gender system are undoubtedly related to oneanother, they can vary independently. Conceptuallyand analytically separating norms from practices alsoenables a consideration of how gender performancesthat are widely practiced but not yet incorporatedinto normative ideals may be maintained and theeffects of this on self-perception and our evaluations ofothers.

Further extending gender analysis to include notonly an acknowledgment of the distinction betweennorms and practices but also an explicit recognition ofmasculinities and femininities, as well as other socialdifferences, might complicate our desire to draw clear


176 Whitson

conclusions regarding the effects of economic changeon gender, but it facilitates the analysis of gendersystems as malleable, dynamic, scalar, and internallycomplex landscapes, rather than perpetuating a view ofgender as a characteristic or role that people unprob-lematically assume. The limitations of this researchnecessitated a focus on a single aspect of gender normsand performances—that of paid informal work—but anincorporation of other critical elements that produceand reproduce gender systems (reproduction, leisure,cultural expressions, politics, etc.) would further serveto contribute to the rich understanding of genderthat is needed to understand thoroughly the effects ofdevelopment processes.

Acknowledgments

This research was undertaken with the generous sup-port of a Graduate Research Fellowship from the Orga-nization of American States. Financial support was alsoprovided by the Glenda Laws Memorial Fund from theDepartment of Geography at Pennsylvania State Uni-versity. I would like to express my gratitude to AudreyKobayashi and the anonymous reviewers of this arti-cle and a previous submission, whose insight, guidance,and encouragement were exceptional and truly criti-cal in helping me to bring this article to its final form.My heartfelt thanks also go to those whose assistancewas invaluable during my time in Argentina: MarcelaCerrutti, Paula Colonna, Ignacia Perrugorrıa, and espe-cially Vanesa Cernadas. Finally, I am indebted to myresearch participants who opened their hearts and livesto me.

Notes1. For a more complete review of theories of informal

work, see Rakowski (1994); Chen, Carr, and Vanek(2004); Whitson (2004); and Valenzuela (2005). Al-though a number of researchers (e.g., Peattie 1987; Meadand Morrisson 1996; Olmedo and Murray 2002; Samers2005) have questioned the usefulness of the term infor-mal work and the formal–informal dichotomy, I continueto make use of the term in this article because, in spite ofdifficulties in presenting a cohesive definition of informalwork, explanation of the phenomenon, or description ofthe activity, the concept of informal work continues tobe meaningful for workers, government policymakers,and academics and in this way continues to affect thepractice itself. This shared, generalized understanding ofthe concept of informal work, especially among peoplein Buenos Aires, signifies cohesiveness in the realm ofsocial meaning that the practice itself might lack.

2. I have intentionally chosen to consider informal workin this article, as opposed to the informal sector or infor-mal economy. Although there is a great deal of overlapin these concepts, the terms informal sector and infor-mal economy suggest a separation and distinction from aformal sector or economy that does not exist in the con-text of Argentina. Informal work, on the other hand,as defined by the characteristics of the labor relationat the individual level, can be said to exist within allsectors of the economy, including the public sector inArgentina, and as a result does not constitute a distinctsector or economy. Moreover, the term informal workis more commonly used to describe the labor relation-ship and the legal status of the worker rather than theestablishment or occupation.

3. Although a good deal of research has also been doneon other aspects of masculinity in Latin America,such as fatherhood, leisure, homosociability, and sexu-ality (Valdes and Olavarrıa 1997; Archetti 1999; Gayol2000; Viveros Vigoya, Fuller, and Olavarrıa 2001; Gut-mann 2003a; Reddock 2004), research focusing on eco-nomic change concentrates heavily on the experience ofunemployment.

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

5. Although not the focus of this article, this research waslimited to workers with children cohabitating with aspouse or partner to facilitate the analysis of the waysthat informal work affects masculine and feminine per-formances in the home, especially with regard to repro-ductive work. It is important to note, however, that manyinformal workers live in other family arrangements, in-cluding single-parent households or households withoutchildren (see Chant 2002). Indeed, a large number of in-formal workers in some occupations (e.g., vending andtrash picking) are minors themselves. The focus on work-ers living in a two-parent family is thus not intended tonormalize this living arrangement but rather to limitpotential variability in household arrangements to facil-itate analysis.

6. As Chant (2002, 562) has argued, the tendency con-tinues to exist in research on gender and developmentfor “‘traditional’ feminist research to be based only onwomen, and the growing body of work on masculinitiesto be rooted solely in work with men.” This research isthus somewhat unique in that it draws on the perceptionsof men and women to discuss both masculinities andfemininities. In the analysis of the interview transcripts,however, I did not identify any significant difference inthe way that men and women discussed the issues pre-sented in this article; rather, there was a strikingly highdegree of similarity among the two sets of interviewees.As a result, citations were chosen for use in this articleto the extent that they helped to elucidate the matter athand, regardless of the sex of the speaker.

7. Although this methodology could be considered prob-lematic, in that such a diverse array of workers and typesof work were included in the analysis, it allowed fora consideration of the way that meanings and experi-ences of informal work might vary according to differingcharacteristics of the job or worker. It also provided an



opportunity to entertain the question of whether there isanything unique to the category of informal work, eitherin practice or in concept.

8. It is important to note that, although workers associateinformality with work that takes place in the home, itis clear that this association would not necessarily ex-ist among all groups or in all places. As telecommutingand other formal home-based work arrangements havebecome more commonplace in Argentina as well as else-where, formal working arrangements are increasinglyfound within the home. As recent studies conductedin other geographic contexts indicate, however, evenprofessional, formal work done from home challengestraditional notions of work (Randall 1993; Ahrentzen1997), and among low-income and subsistence workers,home-based work continues to be largely informal andprecarious (Miraftab 1996; Pearson 2004).

9. In interpreting the results presented in Table 1, it isimportant to recognize that, as a result of the samplingdesign, all women interviewed for this project wereengaged in paid work. Among the men interviewed, allof those in the middle class and seventeen out of twenty-six in the popular sector were part of dual-incomehouseholds. Although the research presented here, asa result of sampling design, is not generalizable to theentire population, the results presented in Table 1 arecomparable to those of Wainerman (2002), who foundthat among the entire population of dual-income house-holds in the year 2000, 46.2 percent of women werecontributing equal or greater amounts than their malepartners.

10. This was the case even though, according to my respon-dents, the crisis situation seemed to force a number ofpeople out of what would have been a traditional jobfor someone of their sex and into another occupation.For instance, three popular-sector women were workingwith their husbands in the traditionally masculine-typedjob of garbage scavenging because they were unableto find work in domestic service. Similarly, two menwho worked alongside their wives cooking food in theirhomes to sell on the streets or to businesses were in a sim-ilar situation, as they attributed this choice of job to theirlack of work in the construction industry. Additionally,because my sampling method was focused on capturingdiversity among informal workers rather than being rep-resentative of the informal workforce as a whole, I madea special effort to interview people working informallyin a variety of occupations. Had I not done this, withinpopular-class workers, I could have easily spoken only towomen who worked as domestic workers and men whoworked as day laborers or construction workers.

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

12. As would be expected when considering livelihood de-cisions as one aspect of individual gender performances,

the role of caretaker did not appear to influence men’sdecision-making processes to the same extent: Whereasonly eight of the forty-five men I interviewed cited want-ing or needing to be near their children as a factor indetermining their work location, fully half of the womenI interviewed brought this up as an important issue intheir decision-making process.

13. Although women also often brought up issues of inde-pendence in relation to informal work, only in a few casesdid this appear to be a performance of this masculinity.Rather, their comments more frequently set this concernin the context of flexibility to be able to fulfill domes-tic requirements and rarely focused on being outside orbeing in the street, which is a central component of thisparticular gendered performance.

14. High rates of informal work characterized much of LatinAmerica throughout the twentieth century, but in Ar-gentina levels of informal work remained relatively lowthrough the 1970s, at between 20 and 30 percent ofwaged workers (Guissarri 1989; IDEC 1991; Carpio andNovacovsky 1999).

References

Abramo, L., and M. E. Valenzuela. 2001. America Latina:Brechas de equidad y progreso laboral de las mujeres en los90 [Latin America: Inequities and women’s occupationalprogress in the 1990s]. Lima, Peru: International LabourOffice/PREALC.

———. 2005. Women’s labour force participation rates inLatin America. International Labor Review 144:370–99.

Ahrentzen, S. 1997. The meaning of home workplaces forwomen. In Thresholds in feminist geography: Difference,methodology, representation, ed. J. P. Jones III, H. J. Nast,and S. M. Roberts, 77–92. New York: Rowman andLittlefield.

Archetti, E. 1999. Masculinities: Football, polo, and the tangoin Argentina. Oxford, UK: Berg.

Arizpe, L. 1997. Women in the informal labor sector: Thecase of Mexico City. In The women, gender and develop-ment reader, ed. N. Visvanathan, L. Duggan, L. Nisonoff,and N. Wiegersma, 230–37. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: ZedBooks.

Arriagada, I. 1998. Realidades y mitos del trabajo femenino ur-bano en America Latina [The urban female labor marketin Latin America: The myth and the reality]. Santiago deChile: United Nations.

Babb, F. E. 1990. Women’s work: Engendering economicanthropology. Urban Anthropology 19:277–302.

Barbieri, C. T. 1996. Women workers in transition: The po-tential impact of the NAFTA labor side agreements onwomen workers in Argentina and Chile. ComparativeLabor Law Journal 17:526–64.

Beccaria, L., and A. Quintar. 1995. Reconversion productivay mercado de trabajo: Reflexiones a partir de la expe-riencia de SOMISA [Industrial reorganization and thelabor market: Reflections based on the experience ofSOMISA]. Desarrollo Economico 35:401–18.

Benerıa, L. 2003. Gender, development, and globalization: Eco-nomics as if all people mattered. London and New York:Routledge.


178 Whitson

Berke, D. L. 2003. Coming home again: The challenges andrewards of home-based self-employment. Journal of Fam-ily Studies 24:513–46.

Bisio, R. H., and P. Forni. 2001. Informalidad y familiaen los ’90: Revision crıtica de las perspectivas prevale-cientes en la teorıa social [Informality and family in the1990s: A critical review of contemporary perspectivesin social theory]. In Articulaciones en el mercado labo-ral: Reflexiones y experiencias [The shape of the labor mar-ket: Reflections and experience], ed. F. H. Forni and H.Angelico, 65–82. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial LoColmena.

Blunt, A., and R. Dowling. 2006. Home. London and NewYork: Routledge.

Blunt, A., and A. Varley. 2004. Introduction: Geographiesof home. Cultural Geographies 11:3–6.

Boso, R. M. R., and A. Salvia. 2006. Condicionantes socialesdel malestar sujetivo en un entorno de crisis y desempleomasivo [Social determinants of subjective malaise in aperiod of crisis and massive unemployment]. Revista dePsicologıa de la Universidad Catolica de Argentina 2:2–39.

Carpio, J., and I. Novacovsky. 1999. Introduccion [Introduc-tion]. In Informalidad y exclusion social [Informality andSocial Exclusion], ed. J. Carpio, E. Klein, and I. Novacov-sky, 11–22. Buenos Aires, Argentina: ILO.

Castells, M., and A. Portes. 1989. The world underneath:The origins, dynamics, and effects of the informal econ-omy. In The informal economy: Studies in advanced andless developed countries, ed. A. Portes, M. Castells, and L.A. Benton, 11–40. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress.

Centeno, M. A., and A. Portes. 2006. The informal economyin the shadow of the state. In Out of the shadows: Politicalaction and the informal economy in Latin America, ed. P.Fernandez-Kelly and J. Shefner, 23–48. University Park:The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Cerrutti, M. 2000. Economic reform, structural adjustmentand female labor force participation in Buenos Aires,Argentina. World Development 28:879–91.

———. 2002. Trabajo, organizacion familiar y relacionesde genero en Buenos Aires [Work, family organization,and gender relations in Buenos Aires]. In Familia, trabajoy genero: Un mundo de nuevas relaciones [Family, work,and gender: A world of new relations], ed. C. Wainer-man, 105–52. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Fondo de Cul-tura Economica de Argentina.

Chant, S. 2000. Men in crisis? Reflections on masculinities,work and family in north-west Costa Rica. The EuropeanJournal of Development Research 12:199–218.

———. 2002. Researching gender, families and householdsin Latin America: From the 20th into the 21st century.Bulletin of Latin American Research 21:545–75.

Chant, S., with N. Craske. 2003. Gender in Latin America.New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Chant, S., and M. Gutmann. 2000. Mainstreaming men intogender and development: Debates, reflections, and experi-ences. Oxford, UK: Oxfam.

———. 2002. “Men-streaming” gender? Questions for gen-der and development policy in the twenty-first century.Progress in Development Studies 2:269–82.

Chen, M. A., M. Carr, and J. Vanek. 2004. Mainstreaminginformal employment and gender in poverty reduction: A

handbook for policymakers and other stakeholders. London:Commonwealth Secretariat.

Chen, M., J. Sebstad, and L. O’Connell. 1999. Countingthe invisible workforce: The case of homebased workers.World Development 27:603–10.

Cheng, C., ed. 1996a. Masculinities in organizations. ThousandOaks, CA: Sage.

———. 1996b. Men and masculinities are not necessarilysynonymous: Thoughts on organizational behavior andoccupational sociology. In Masculinities in organizations,ed. C. Cheng, xi–xx. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Cleaver, F. 2002. Men and masculinities: New direction ingender and development. In Masculinities matter! Men,gender and development, ed. F. Cleaver, 1–27. New York:Zed Books.

Collinson, D. L. 1992. Managing the shopfloor: Subjectiv-ity, masculinity, and workplace culture. Berlin: Walter deGruyter.

Collinson, D., and J. Hearn. 1996. “Men” at “work”: Multi-ple masculinities/multiple workplaces. In Understandingmasculinities: Social relations and cultural arenas, ed. M.M. a. Ghaill, 61–76. Buckingham, UK: Open UniversityPress.

Connell, R. W. 1995. Masculinities. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press.

Cupples, J. 2005. Love and money in an age of neoliberal-ism: Gender, work, and single motherhood in postrev-olutionary Nicaragua. Environment and Planning A 37:305–22.

Davidoff, L. 1998. Regarding some “old husbands’ tales”: Pub-lic and private in feminist history. In Feminism, the publicand the private, ed. J. Landes, 164–94. Oxford, UK: Ox-ford University Press.

Dennis, C. 1995. The limits to women’s independent careers:Gender in the formal and informal sectors in Nigeria. InMale bias in the development process, ed. D. Elson, 83–104.Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

de Soto, H. 1989. The other path: The invisible revolution in theThird World. New York: Harper and Row.

de Suremain, M. D., and O. F. Acevedo. 1999. Feminizacionde la pobreza y retroceso de la paternidad en sectores pop-ulares de Medellın [Feminization of poverty and the re-versal of fatherhood in the popular sectors in Medellın].Cuadernos: Familia, Cultura, y Sociedad [Notebook: Fam-ily, Culture, and Society] 3–4:123–33.

Di Marco, G. 1988. Empleo precario y mujeres [Women andprecarious employment]. In La situacion de la mujer en larepublica Argentina [The situation of women in the ArgentineRepublic], ed. G. Colombo, G. d. Marco, and M. Gogna,1–14. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ministerio de Salud yAccion Social, Secretarıa de Desarrollo Humano y Fa-milia, Subsecretarıa de la Mujer, Direccion Nacional deEstudios, Proyectos, e Investigacion.

Domosh, M., and J. Seager. 2001. Putting women in place:Feminist geographers make sense of the world. New York:Guilford.

Duryea, S., and M. Szekely. 1998. Labor markets in LatinAmerica: A supply-side story. Working Paper 374, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC.

Espinal, R., and S. Grasmuck. 1997. Gender, households andinformal entrepreneurship in the Dominican Republic.Journal of Comparative Family Studies 28:103–29.



Feijoo, M. d. C. 2001. Nuevo paıs, nueva pobreza [New country,new poverty]. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Fondo de CulturaEconomica.

Feijoo, M. d. C., and M. M. A. Nari. 1996. Women in Ar-gentina during the 1960s. Latin American Perspectives23:7–26.

Forni, F. H., and L. M. Roldan. 1996. Trayectorias laboralesde residentes de areas urbanas pobres: Un estudio decasos en el conurbano bonaerense [Labor trajectories ofresidents of poor urban areas: A case study from theBuenos Aires metropolitan area]. Desarrollo Economico[Economic Development] 35:585–99.

Freije, S. 2002. Informal employment in Latin America and theCaribbean: Causes, consequences and policy recommenda-tions. Labor Markets Policy Brief Series, Inter-AmericanDevelopment Bank, Washington, DC.

Fuller, N. 2000. Work and masculinity among Peruvian ur-ban men. The European Journal of Development Research12:93–114.

———. 2003. The social constitution of gender identityamong Peruvian males. In Changing men and masculinitiesin Latin America, ed. M. C. Gutmann, 134–52. Durham,NC: Duke University Press.

Galli, R., and D. Kucera. 2003. Informal employment in LatinAmerica: Movements over business cycles and the effects ofworker rights. Geneva, Switzerland: International Insti-tute for Labour Studies.

Garcia de Fanelli, A. M. 1991. Empleo femenino en la Ar-gentina: De la modernizacion de los ’60 a la crisis delos ’80 [Female employment in Argentina: From themodernization of the 1960s to the crisis of the 1980s].Desarrollo Economico [Economic Development] 31:395–414.

Gayol, S. 2000. Sociabilidad en Buenos Aires: Hombres, honor ycafes, 1862–1910 [Sociability in Buenos Aires: Men, honor,and cafes]. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ediciones del Signo.

Gonzalez, C. S. 1990. La mujer trabajadora en Argentina: Dis-criminacion y propuesta de cambio [The working womanin Argentina: Discrimination and suggestions for change].Buenos Aires, Argentina: Funcacion Friedrich Ebert.

Gonzalez de la Rocha, M., and B. B. Gantt. 1995. The urbanfamily and poverty in Latin America. Latin AmericanPerspectives 22:12–31.

Gough, K. V., and P. Kellett. 2001. Housing consolidationand home-based income generation: Evidence from self-help settlements in two Colombian cities. Cities 18:235–47.

Guerrero, O. T., and P. J. Anaya. 2006. Estrategias para man-tener el modelo de masculinidad en padres-esposos de-sempleados [Strategies used to maintain the masculinemodel by unemployed husbands and fathers] . La Ventana[The Window] 24:440–67.

Guissarri, A. 1989. La Argentina informal [Informal Argentina].Buenos Aires, Argentina: Emece Editores.

Gutmann, M. C. 1996. The meanings of macho: Being a manin Mexico City. Berkeley: University of California Press.

———, ed. 2003a. Changing men and masculinities in LatinAmerica. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

———. 2003b. Introduction: Discarding manly dichotomiesin Latin America. In Changing men and masculinities inLatin America, ed. M. C. Gutmann, 1–26. Durham, NC:Duke University Press.

Hays-Mitchell, M. 1995. Voices and visions from the streets:Gender interests and political participation amongwomen informal traders in Latin America. Environmentand Planning D: Society and Space 13:445–69.

———. 1999. From survivor to entrepreneur: Gendered di-mensions of microenterprise development in Peru. Envi-ronment and Planning A 31:251–71.

Haywood, C., and M. Mac an Ghaill. 2003. Men and mas-culinities: Theory, research and social practice. Bucking-ham, UK: Open University Press.

Hodgson, D. 2003. “Taking it like a man”: Masculinity, sub-jection and resistance in the selling of life assurance.Gender, Work and Organization 10:1–21.

Hooper, C. 2000. Masculinities in transition: The case ofglobalization. In Gender and global restructuring: Sightings,sites and resistances, ed. M. Marchand and A. S. Runyan,59–73. London and New York: Routledge.

Hoyman, M. 1987. Female participation in the informaleconomy: A neglected issue. Annals of the AmericanAcademy of Political and Social Sciences 493:64–82.

Instituto de Estudios Contemporaneos (IDEC). 1991. Laeconomıa informal en Argentina [The informal econ-omy in Argentina]. In El sector informal en AmericaLatina: Una seleccion de perspectivas analıticas [The infor-mal sector in Latin America: A selection of analytical per-spectives], ed. J. Schatan, D. Paas, and A. Orsatti, 345–55.Churubusco, Mexico: Centro de Investigacion y Docen-cia Economicas.

Instituto Nacional de Estadıstica y Censos (INDEC). 2002–2007. Encuesta Permanente de Hogares [Permanent house-hold survey]. Buenos Aires, Argentina: INDEC.

International Labor Organization (ILO). 2002. Decent workand the informal economy. Geneva, Switzerland: Interna-tional Labour Office.

Jackson, C. 2000. Men at work. European Journal of Develop-ment Research 12:1–22.

Jackson, P. 1991. The cultural politics of masculinity: To-wards a social geography. Transactions of the Institute ofBritish Geographers 16:199–213.

Kabeer, N. 2007. Marriage, motherhood and masculinity in theglobal economy: Reconfigurations of personal and economiclife. IDS Working Paper 290, Institute of DevelopmentStudies, Brighton, UK.

Kellett, P., and A. G. Tipple. 2000. The home as work-place: A study of income-generating activities within thedomestic setting. Environment and Urbanization 12:203–13.

Klein, E., and V. Tokman. 2000. Social stratification undertension in a globalized era. CEPAL Review 72:7–30.

Latapı, A. E. 2003. Men and their histories: Restructuring,gender inequality, and life transitions in urban Mexico.In Changing men and masculinities in Latin America, ed. M.C. Gutmann, 84–114. Durham, NC: Duke UniversityPress.

Laurie, N. 1999. State-backed work programmes and the re-gendering of work in Peru: Negotiating femininity in“the provinces.” Environment and Planning A 31:229–50.

———. 2005. Establishing development orthodoxy: Negoti-ating masculinities in the water sector. Development andChange 36:527–49.

Laurie, N., C. Dwyer, S. Holloway, and F. Smith, eds. 1999.Geographies of new femininities. Essex, UK: Longman.


180 Whitson

Lawson, V. 1995. Beyond the firm: Restructuring gender di-visions of labor in Quito’s garment industry under aus-terity. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13(4): 415–44.

———. 1999. Tailoring is a profession, seamstressing is work!Resiting work and reworking gender identities among ar-tisanal garment workers in Quito. Environment and Plan-ning A 31:209–27.

Lema, J. E. 2001. El empleo informal al finalizar del milenio[Informal employment at the end of the millenium]. InArticulaciones en el mercado laboral: Reflexiones y experi-encias [The shape of the labor market: Reflections and expe-rience], ed. F. H. Forni and H. Angelico, 83–91. BuenosAires, Argentina: Editorial Lo Colmena.

Lopez, N., and A. Monza. 1995. Un intento de estimaciondel sector informal urbano en la Argentina [An attemptto estimate the urban informal sector in Argentina]. De-sarrollo Economico [Economic Development] 35:467–73.

Maloney, W. F. 2004. Informality revisited. World Develop-ment 32:1159–78.

Massey, D. 1994. Space, place, and gender. Minneapolis: Uni-versity of Minnesota Press.

Massey, D., and L. McDowell. 1994. A woman’s place? InSpace, place, and gender, ed. D. Massey, 191–211. Min-neapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

McDowell, L. 1999. Gender, identity and place: Understand-ing feminist geographies. Minneapolis, MN: University ofMinnesota Press.

———. 2002. Transitions to work: Masculine identities,youth inequality, and labour market change. Gender,Place and Culture 9:39–59.

———. 2003a. Masculine discourses and dissonances: Strut-ting “lads,” protest masculinity, and domestic re-spectability. Environment and Planning D: Society andSpace 20:97–119.

———. 2003b. Masculine identities and low-paid work:Young men in urban labour markets. International Journalof Urban and Regional Research 27:828–48.

McKeever, M. 1998. Reproduced inequality: Participationand success in the South African informal economy.Social Forces 76:1209–41.

Mead, D. C., and C. Morrisson. 1996. The informal sectorelephant. World Development 24:1611–19.

Meier, V. 1999. Cut-flower production in Colombia—A ma-jor development success story for women? Environmentand Planning A 31:273–89.

Miraftab, F. 1996. Space, gender, and work: Home-basedworkers in Mexico. In Homeworkers in global perspective:Invisible no more, ed. E. Boris and E. Prugl, 63–80. Londonand New York: Routledge.

Mirchandani, K. 1998. Protecting the boundary: Teleworkerinsights on the expansive concept of “work.” Gender &Society 12:168–87.

———. 2000. “The best of both worlds” and “cutting myown throat”: Contradictory images of home-based work.Qualitative Sociology 23:159–82.

Mohanty, C. T. 2004. Women workers and the politics of sol-idarity. In Feminism without borders: Decolonizing theory,practicing solidarity, 139–68: Durham, NC: Duke Univer-sity Press.

Montecinos, V. 1994. Neoliberal economic reforms andwomen in Chile. In Women in the age of economic trans-

formation: Gender impact of reforms in post-socialist and de-veloping countries, ed. N. Aslanbeigui, S. Pressman, andG. Summerfield, 160–78. London and New York: Rout-ledge.

Moser, C. O. N. 1978. Informal sector or petty commodityproduction: Dualism or dependence in urban develop-ment? World Development 6:1041–64.

Nayak, A. 2003. Last of the “real Geordies”? White mas-culinities and the subcultural response to deindustrializa-tion. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 21:7–25.

Olavarrıa, J. 2003. Men at home? Child rearing and house-keeping among Chilean working-class fathers. In Chang-ing men and masculinities in Latin America, ed. M. C.Guttman, 333–51. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Olmedo, C., and M. J. Murray. 2002. The formalization ofinformal/precarious labor in contemporary Argentina.International Sociology 17:421–43.

Pearson, R. 2004. Organising home-based workers in theglobal economy: An action-research approach. Devel-opment in Practice 14:136–48.

Peattie, L. 1987. An idea in good currency and how itgrew: The informal sector. World Development 15:851–60.

Portes, A., M. Castells, and L. A. Benton. 1989. Introduc-tion. In The informal economy: Studies in advanced andless developed countries, ed. A. Portes, M. Castells, and L.A. Benton, 1–7. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress.

Portes, A., and K. Hoffman. 2003. La estructura de clases enAmerica Latina: Composicion y cambios durante la eraneoliberal [Class structure in Latin America: Composi-tion and change during the neoliberal era]. DesarrolloEconomico [Economic Development] 43:355–87.

Portes, A., and R. Schauffler. 1993. Competing perspectiveson the Latin American informal sector. Population andDevelopment Review 19:33–60.

Pyle, J. L., and K. B. Ward. 2003. Recasting our understandingof gender and work during global restructuring. Interna-tional Sociology 18:461–89.

Radcliffe, S. A. 1999. Latina labour: Restructuring of workand renegotiations of gender relations in contemporaryLatin America. Environment and Planning A 31:196–208.

Rakowski, C. A. 1994. Convergence and divergence in theinformal sector debate: A focus on Latin America, 1984–92. World Development 22:501–16.

Randall, J. 1993. “At home,” “at work”: A boundary crossed.In Housing: Design, research, education, ed. M. Bulos andN. Teymur, 109–22. Brookfield, VT: Ashgate.

Rapoport, M. 2002. Tiempos de crisis, vientos de cambio: Ar-gentina y el poder global [Times of crisis, winds of change:Argentina and global power]. Buenos Aires, Argentina:Grupo Editoral Norma.

Reddock, R. E., ed. 2004. Interrogating Caribbean masculinities:Theoretical and empirical analyses. Kingston, Jamaica: TheUniversity of the West Indies Press.

Roca, E. 1999. El trabajo no registrado y la exclusion de laseguridad social [Unregistered work and exclusion fromsocial security]. In Informalidad y exclusion social [Infor-mality and social exclusion], ed. J. Carpio, E. Klein, and I.Novacovsky, 111–38. Buenos Aires, Argentina: ILO.



Safa, H. I. 1995. Economic restructuring and gender subordi-nation. Latin American Perspectives 22:32–50.

Sage, C. 1993. Deconstructing the household: Women’sroles under commodity relations in highland Bolivia.In Different places, different voices, ed. J. H. Mom-sen and V. Kinnaird, 243. London and New York:Routledge.

Sainz, J. P. P., and R. M. Larin. 1994. Central American menand women in the urban informal sector. Journal of LatinAmerican Studies 26:431–47.

Samers, M. 2005. The myopia of “diverse economies,” or acritique of the “informal economy.” Antipode 37:875–86.

Sautu, R., C. Couso, L. Griselli, and A. Perez. 2000. Condi-ciones de vida y roles familiares en el area metropolitanade Buenos Aires [Living conditions and family roles inthe metropolitan area of Buenos Aires]. In Las mujereshablan: Consecuencias del ajuste economico en familias desectores pobres y medios en la argentina [Women speak:Consequences of the economic adjustment in family of Ar-gentina’s poor and middle class], ed. R. Sautu, A. Eguıa, andS. Ortale, 46–63. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ediciones alMargen.

Scott, A. M. 1995. Informal sector or female sector? Genderbias in urban labor market models. In Male bias in thedevelopment process, ed. D. Elson, 105–32. Manchester,UK: Manchester University Press.

Scott, J. W. 1988. Gender and the politics of history. New York:Columbia University Press.

Secor, A. J. 2003. Belaboring gender: The spatial practiceof work and the politics of “making do” in Istanbul.Environment and Planning A 35:2209–27.

Silveira, S., and A. Matosas. 2005. Gender and the infor-mal economy in Latin America: New challenges andpossible answers for labour training policies. In Meet-ing basic learning needs in the informal sector: Integratingeducation and training for decent work, empowerment andcitizenship, ed. M. Singh, 91–118. Bonn, Germany: UN-ESCO/UNEVOC.

Standing, G. 1989. Global feminization through flexible la-bor. World Development 17:1077–95.

———. 1999. Global feminization through flexible labor: Atheme revisited. World Development 27:583–602.

Stolen, K. A. 1996. The gentle exercise of male power inrural Argentina. Identities 2:385–406.

Thomas, J. J. 1992. Informal economic activity. Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press.

———. 1995. Surviving in the city: The urban informal sectorin Latin America. East Haven, CT: Pluto Press.

Tiano, S. 2001. From victims to agents: A new generation ofliterature on women in Latin America. Latin AmericanResearch Review 36:183–203.

Toro-Morn, M. I., A. R. Roschelle, and E. Facio. 2002. Gen-der, work, and the family in Cuba: The challenges of

the special period. Journal of Developing Societies 18:32–58.

Tuominen, M. 1994. The hidden organization of labor: Gen-der, race/ethnicity and child-care work in the formal andinformal economy. Sociological Perspectives 37:229–45.

Valdes, T., and J. Olavarrıa, eds. 1997. Masculinidad/es: Podery crisis [Masculinities: Power and crisis]. Santiago, Chile:Isis Internacional.

Valenzuela, M. E. 2005. Informality and gender in LatinAmerica. Policy Integration Department Working Pa-per 60, International Labour Organization, Geneva,Switzerland.

Vincent, S. 1998. Gender ideologies and the informal econ-omy: Reproduction and the “grapes-of-wrath” effect inMata Chico, Peru. Latin American Perspectives 25:120–39.

Viveros Vigoya, M. 2001. Contemporary Latin Ameri-can perspectives on masculinity. Men and Masculinities3:237–60.

Viveros Vigoya, M., N. Fuller, and J. Olavarrıa, eds. 2001.Hombres e identidades de genero: Investigaciones desdeAmerica Latina [Men and gender identities: Investigationsfrom Latin America]. Bogota: Universidad Nacional deColombia.

Wainerman, C. 2002. La reestructuracion de las fronteras degenero [Restructuring the frontiers of gender]. In Familia,trabajo y genero: Un mundo de nuevas relaciones [Work,family organization, and gender relations in Buenso Aires],ed. C. Wainerman, 55–104. Buenos Aires: Fondo deCultura Economica de Argentina.

Ward, K. B., and J. L. Pyle. 1995. Gender, industrializa-tion, transnational corporations, and development: Anoverview of trends and patterns. In Women in the LatinAmerica development process, ed. C. E. Bose and E. Acosta-Belen, 37–64. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

White, J. 1994. Money makes us relatives: Women’s labor inurban Turkey. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Whitson, R. 2004. Reworking place, gender, and power: In-formal work in urban Argentina. PhD dissertation, ThePennsylvania State University.

Williams, C. C., and J. Windebank. 1993. Social and spatialinequalities in the informal economy: Some evidencefrom the European community. Area 25:358–64.

Willott, S., and C. Griffin. 1996. Men, masculinity and thechallenge of long-term unemployment. In Understandingmasculinities: Social relations and cultural arenas, ed. M.M. a. Ghaill, 77–94. Buckingham, UK: Open UniversityPress.

Wilson, F. 1993. Workshops as domestic domains: Reflec-tions on small-scale industry in Mexico. World Develop-ment 21:67–80.

Wilson, T. D. 1998. Approaches to understanding the po-sition of women workers in the informal sector. LatinAmerican Perspectives 25:105–19.

Correspondence: Department of Geography, Ohio University, 110 Clippinger Labs, Athens, OH 45701, e-mail: [email protected]


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

Documents

Transcript of The Reality of Today Has Required Us to Change”: Negotiating Gender Through Informal Work in...