CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

In this article we are presenting some preliminary results of the project "The gender issues in the unemployed workers organisations, a public or domestic problem?". The guidelines of this investigation arise from the first outcomes of a previous project "The challenges to the individualized management of poverty and unemployment. The cases of poor unemployed workers organisations and recovered factories". This investigation work led us to adopt a gender perspective to analyse the relationships among the members of poor unemployed workpeople (PUW) organisations, given the fact that they are directed by men while the major part of the individuals involved are women. Therefore, in this new project, we analyse conceptions about work, political commitment, and female and male roles in PUW organisations, taking into account how they are incorporated to their demands and political action. Besides, we explore how the organisations demands are reflected and considered by the public policies implemented in order to attend the poor unemployed people. In this paper we are presenting some preliminary results related to the women participation in the PUW organisations, and the impact of their experience in their representations about female roles. We are going to introduce in the first place some distinctive characteristics of PUW organisations and their process of constitution. Secondly, we are going to discuss the guidelines of the methodology used. After this general presentation we address the core of the article. First, the tensions involved in the creation of women´s spaces and finally the continuities and changes in feminine traditional models after women´s social and political commitment.