Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento Care Workers in
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Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento Care Workers in Argentina: Preschool Teachers and Domestic Workers Valeria Esquivel IAFFE 18 th Annual Conference Simmons College, Boston, 27 th June, 2009
Women and men in the Argentinean labour market, 2006. Graph 1 Source: EPH, Country total.
Women and men in the labour market. Urban totals, 2006 Graph 2 Source: EPH, Country total. Graph 3 Source: EPH, Country total.
Two polar types of care workers Pre-school teachers Working conditions • Schools/kindergartens, most of them in the Public Sector; • Highly regulated profession; • Almost all registered; • Job-stability and high levels of seniority. Domestic workers • Households as employers; • Special working status; • Hardly registered (9% in 2006, probably a third of them in 2008). • High turnover.
Two polar types of care workers Pre-school teachers Socio demographic characteristics Wages Domestic workers • Younger and more • Low educational levels qualified than female and middle-aged; wage workers; • Parents more educated • One third live in poor than average. households. • “Seniority pay” • Wages higher than median wages for women • 20% lower than indicative wage, which is lower than economy wide minimum wages
What does this comparison say about care workers in Argentina? • Care workers are not a homogeneous group. There face highly heterogeneous working conditions, socioeconomic strata and wages; • Highly feminized occupations; • Wage gaps driven by the conditions that are behind high informality in wage work and by being a female wage worker, not by a care penalty in itself. • Specific wage penalties are found associated to work in the “domestic sector” both for (the very few) men and women workers that belong to it.
