Mujeres y niñas entre hilos: condiciones de trabajo en la industria textil a principios del siglo XX. Una experiencia de clase generizada

Abstract

This paper addresses the experiences of textile women workers of the early twentieth century, with special emphasis on the women workers of Gratry, because theywere the protagonists of the 1910 strike rise. In the study of their work and organization, we try to identify the specific exploitation mechanisms of the woman worker, making visible the working conditions, and the gender differences of their experience located in the textile factory in the south of the city of Buenos Aires, in the working-class neighborhood of Pompeya. This research is guided by the idea ofpatriarchy and capitalism as one system that exploits men and women as such in a specific way. It seeks to find its underlying mechanisms. Our hypothesis is that the specificity of the exploitation of women in the textile industry of Buenos Aires is determined by the nature of their labor force, which is totally different from the male one because it makes a different working day, which includes domestic work and hence its specificity and the greater amount of surplus value extracted. This work is the original result of the examination of a varied body of workers documents and official sources, our methodology is dialectical materialism and we have made a qualitative-quantitative examination of the sources, in particular of the Boletín del Departamento Nacional del Trabajo.