Gender bias and family distress: the privatization experience in Argentina.

• Author: Geldstein, Rosa N.
• Position: Privatization: Political and Economic Challenges

Introduction

The intention of this article is to examine structural adjustment and the particular impact of privatization on the lives of women and families. Although privatization is occurring on a global scale, this study draws conclusions specifically from the Argentine case. In doing so, it intends to ask the following questions: how did the process of privatization in Argentina affect the situation of women? Which women were most affected? Were women affected differently than men? Have changing economic conditions--in which privatization plays a strategic role--elicited new strategic responses from families?

Structural adjustment in Argentina began in the mid-1970s. Since that time, adjustment in Argentina--as in Latin America in general--has resulted in a deterioration of living conditions for a significant proportion of the population. The failure of several economic programs during the late 1980s prompted the government to begin implementing privatization in 1991. Privatization produced some economic benefits, but also exacerbated the falling standard of living, with significant sociological consequences.(1) Rising unemployment, falling real salaries (especially those of male breadwinners) and a general spread of poverty have resulted in major changes in family roles and dynamics, including shifts in women's domestic and economic roles that force them to devote an increasing amount of time and effort toward their productive tasks in addition to their reproductive tasks.(2) Due to their central role in the management of family resources and administration of the household, women face major challenges as family incomes shrink(3) and formerly public social services become increasingly expensive and inaccessible.(4) At the same time, the tenuous employment conditions of male heads of households have forced many women into the labor market, where most face poorer working conditions and earn lower salaries than men.(5) In this context, increased labor participation by women from the lower and middle social strata should be understood not as an option for individuals to pursue personal growth--an argument better suited to a minority of highly educated, upper-middle class women--but rather as a survival strategy among families threatened by poverty.(6)

To provide further context for these issues, the first section of this article will review economic trends of the last two decades, focusing on major changes in the labor market of the Buenos Aires metropolitan area since the new economic program began in 1991.(7) The second section discusses the effects of these changes on Buenos Aires' women and families, including some of their major adaptive responses to economic hardship. The third and fourth sections are devoted to an analysis of some specific characteristics of privatization efforts within several major enterprises and their quantitative and qualitative effects on employment and working conditions, especially within the two privatized enterprises with the biggest share of female employees. Finally, some concluding remarks draw out specific policy-oriented conclusions.

Several thorough case studies explore the sociological effects of privatization on Argentina's manufacturing and extractive industries, which mainly employ male workers. These studies are similar in that they all stress the changes in family roles and dynamics that have occurred as a consequence of male unemployment following privatization, and female compensation for the lost income.(8) However, there are no systematic studies that quantitatively assess the specific effects of privatization on total employment in Argentina or its major metropolitan areas. Neither are there studies dealing with the effects of privatization on women employees, nor available statistics that dissagregate employment in privatized firms by gender. This statistical failure parallels the fact that changes within newly privatized firms, although not deliberately directed against women, frequently result in gender biases against female employees by simply ignoring gender asymmetry. This article's content will therefore be based on a mixture of data: statistical evidence from different sources (published and unpublished), results from previous quantitative and qualitative research conducted by the author on related subjects, informal focus interviews with key subjects, and the author's hypotheses. In that sense, sections pertaining to privatization reflect the results of exploratory research.(9)

Economic Restructuring and Its Consequences for the Urban Labor Market(10)

Economic restructuring in Argentina during the last two decades, and especially during the past five years, has been dramatic in light of the role the state had played in economic life during the previous fifty years. From 1930 to 1974, the state sponsored the growth of a relatively diversified economy based on its manufacturing industry and associated services, a vast urban labor market and generally low levels of unemployment or underemployment.(11) Starting in the mid-1940s, a large welfare state and redistributional income policy was developed.

Beginning in 1975, Argentina entered into a 15-year period of economic stagnation and instability. The economy suffered a combination of either low or erratic levels of growth and high inflation. Manufacturing production and manpower decreased, affecting employment and wages of male workers. Unemployment rates doubled between 1975 and 1990, from 2.8 to 6 percent of the total labor force. Formal employment stagnated, informal and temporary employment grew, real wages fell and the inequality of income distribution increased.(12) The proportion of households with incomes below the poverty line grew dramatically, from 2.6 percent in 1974 to 7.5 percent in 1980, reaching a high of 38.3 percent immediately after the hyper-inflation peak in 1989.

From 1991 on, a new economic plan--called the "Convertibility Plan"--established a fixed exchange rate for the peso and cut off salary increases in order to stabilize the economy. Other major changes pertaining to the economic restructuring included: the dismantling of the welfare state; the privatization of public enterprises,(13) including new regulations for public employment and decentralization of social services;(14) deregulation of private economic activities and weakened labor laws; partial privatization of the social security system (retirements and pension assignments); tightening of monetary policy; creation of new tax regulations to improve collections; increased financing costs and opening the economy to international trade. During the first four years of the plan, GDP grew steadily and inflation was (and still is) effectively kept under control. The labor supply increase was matched by the expansion of employment until 1992. However, starting in 1993 and becoming even more dramatic after 1994,(15) a new recessionary period resulted in the continuity and even intensification of the previous negative trends.(16) Of all the structural adjustment policies, the privatization of public enterprises--as well as the restructuring of private firms in general--seems to have had the strongest and longest-lasting negative effects on employment.(17)

Deregulation of private economic activities, increasingly flexible labor laws, high financing costs, the opening up of the economy to trade and the introduction of new labor-saving technologies all contributed to a fall in production, as well as a decline in both real salaries and employment levels.(18) Employment also fell in most other economic sectors, including retail, construction and domestic services.(19)

Thus, after a small drop in 1991, unemployment started rising again, jumping to 13.1 percent in 1993 and rising to its highest historical level of 17.4 percent in 1995.(20) Poverty also started to increase again, from 13.1 percent of total households in October 1993 to 19.6 percent in May 1996, when 26.7 percent of individuals were below the poverty level. This dual increase translated into previously unknown feelings of anguish and fear for the average working person.

The significant increase in the unemployment rate appears to have two major interrelated causes corresponding to the "co-existence of the reduction of jobs and the increase of the population looking to participate in productive activities."(21) The first component of the increase in total unemployment has been the rise of unemployed male heads of household, which includes mainly older males. While the unemployment rate for males in general increased from 9.8 percent to 17.4 percent between May 1994 and May 1995, for male heads of household ages 46 or more, the rate doubled from 8.3 percent to 16.0 percent in the same period.

The second component of the increase in total unemployment can be attributed to the increasing number of wives and adolescents--both sons and daughters--that entered the labor market in order to augment family incomes that had fallen with the unemployment or lowered income of male breadwinners.(22) Between October 1992 and October 1995, women ages 15 to 64 increased their labor participation rate from 45.9 percent to 51.7 percent, while female unemployment grew from 6.3 percent to 20.1 percent. During the same years, the unemployment rate of people ages 15 to 19 increased from 16.3 percent to 41.8 percent.

Thus, it seems that families in Buenos Aires are repeating the same economic strategy they employed during the 1989 hyper-inflation crisis. The number of economically active members has increased in order to either maintain income levels or avoid poverty.(23) It may be assumed that this strategy involves a change in traditional gender roles, with the imposition of new responsibilities on women.

Recession, Economic Adjustment and Family Distress: Are New Economic Policies Solving Any Problems?(24)

The traditional western nuclear family model continues to prevail in...