Mercado de trabajo, segregación de género y biopoderanálisis comparativo de los obstáculos y estrategias de las trabajadoras en México, España y Países Bajos

Abstract

Work is one of the tools people can dispose of to gain value in society and to obtain the resources needed to live. Therefore, work can be seen either as a guideline towards social rescue or as a form of independence. Thus, access to the labour market is a way of guaranteeing such independence and vital resources to people. Despite this, there are several obstacles to accessing the labour market and one of these is gender-based discrimination, which disadvantages women and undermines their social and political agency. However, despite the growing importance of women’s (lack of) presence in high-ranking positions (vertical segregation), it is often taken for granted that women workers' access to any kind of sector and profession is guaranteed when in practice this is not always the case (horizontal segregation). This illusion of equality is also reflected in the academic literature on the subject, where there is an imbalance between the literature on vertical and horizontal segregation. Particularly in Western countries, where the idea of a liberal and egalitarian society corresponds to an identitarian narrative that countries make of themselves, exposing themselves to perceptual biases about the presence of women in the various sectors of the labour market. This research aims to identify the main obstacles that women encounter in those sectors where they are underrepresented, as well as the strategies that they put in place to confront these obstacles. To achieve this, three case studies of groups of women workers are analysed: a cooperative of fisherwomen in Mexico, an association of fisherwomen in Spain and an unorganised group of Latin American women workers in sectors underrepresented by women in the Netherlands. The methodology used is qualitative, through the use of in-depth interviews and participant observation, among other methodological tools. This study shows that the obstacles that women encounter in accessing and remaining in the work sectors analysed are directly related to their gender and to the historical relations between gender and work in their contexts. Moreover, in the case of Latin American women workers in the Netherlands, gender discrimination intersects with ethnicity in the form of dynamics of sexualisation and racialism. As far as the responses of the three groups analysed to horizontal segregation in the labour market are concerned, the first two groups have developed collective strategies to breach traditionally male-dominated professions in their territory. While female workers in the Netherlands have adopted personal strategies, influenced by their migration status and the complications encountered when arriving in the country despite their initial migration project.