Las trabajadoras domésticas entre clase, género y jerarquías de color en la Argentina contemporánea

ACHA, OMAR

Interface. A journal for and about social movements

Interface

Año: 2021 vol. 13 p. 76 - 96

This paper aims to reveal the intersections between class relations, gender performances and racialised hierarchisations in contemporary Argentina. The quarantine imposed in order to restrain the Covid-19 pandemic made evident, once more (likewise happened in previous critical situations), the relevance of domestic workers as symbols of social difference within the landscape of social and cultural inequalities. To fully understand this requires a historical perspective to shed light on the current situation because it is embedded in larger temporal contexts. Since the beginning of 20th century, but especially since the middle of that century, female domestic workers had a symbolic importance in representing the feminine workers within the Argentine working-class. As one of the most oppressed, exploited and despised sectors of the whole class, mostly coloured female domestic workers were far from being simply victims of their social experiences and oppressions. The first part of the paper is articulated in two segments. The initial segment sinthetises the historical transformation of domestic workers? labor force during the period 1900-1945. The second segment reconstructs the class and racialised conflicts during the so-called Peronist age (1945-1955) when domestic workers played an important role in social life. In these situations class struggle, violence and harsh conflictivity underpinned the reconstruction of class relations in Argentina. The second part of the paper deals with contemporary debates about class, culture, gender and coloured hierarchies and how they played out during the pandemic centred on female domestic workers employed in middle-and-upper class neighborhoods. The historical legacies of female domestic workers? actions are reframed in the current situation, undermining the (also academic) condescending dreams of social inclusion and progressive modernization in a class society.