Sabbatical Magaly Rodríguez García: A labour history of women in Ecuador

If the current health crisis allows, I would like to travel to Ecuador in the summer of 2021 for a project on women and labor in historical perspective. That project should result in a comparative analysis of the living and working conditions of subaltern, middle and high class women after 1976 (end of military dictatorship). Women's and Gender History in Ecuador is typified by its focus on indigenous women and middle-class feminists whose identity and livelihood had to be negotiated within postcolonial patriarchal structures. Historians and sociologists who study work also often focus on archetypal forms of subaltern women's labor – (paid and unpaid) home help or agricultural work – through which the history of other working women has remained underexposed. As a result, female labor in Ecuador has been reduced to a history of exploitation and gender inequality in which mainly indigenous women would have been victims of the hegemonic class and macho society. Agency and visions of work as an emancipatory force are rarely addressed in these analyses. This project aims to give (retired and working) women from different generations and from different social backgrounds an opportunity to participate. Because the project will cover themes not often found in classical source material, I want to use oral history to analyze women's views on work, gender relations, work-life balance and interrelations (e.g. between a middle-class woman and her “maid”), as well as the social profiles, work forms and working conditions within the formal and informal economy. The project integrates the theoretical and methodological insights that I have acquired in recent decades through the sub-disciplines of global labor history, subaltern studies and oral history. Depending on the local situation due to Covid-19 and the number of interviews I can take, I will make a decision at a later stage regarding the form of publication of the research results (peer-reviewed journal article or monograph).