By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Oct 4 1997 (IPS)

For most of the world, glamorous model Valeria Mazza and tennis star Gabriela Sabatini are typical of young Aregentinean women. Not so, according to feminist researchers who say statistics tell a very different story.

In Argentina 38 percent of working women between 15 and 19 years are domestic employees with little chance to advance in a caree, say the researchers.

Invisible to the media, these women have employment problems, or work under conditions of exploitation, are vulnerable to AIDS, lack sexual education and suffer from bulimia and anorexia in their desperate effort to imitate the “models”, according to the women’s groups.

The latest data on women in Argentina has been collected by the Center for Women’s Studies, which conducted a study on “Young Women and their Living Conditions.” It was directed by sociologist Gloria Bonder, with the idea of getting to know “real” young women and then coming up with policies specifically suited to their needs.

“There is a face of youth which is the face of a model, and all young men and women who do not conform to this scheme are considered deviant, marginal and so on…” Bonder said.

Many adults believe young women “don’t know what they want…they are “hysterical, only care about being thin and pretty,” or they “they are material…frivolous.” Such criticism is unwarranted, according to Bonder’s studies.

In Argentina, 23 per cent of the country’s 33 million people are aged between 15 and 29 years of age, and half of this group is women. That is to say, there are some four million young women in Argentina living very different lives to those of the more famous.

The survey showed 25 per cent of the young women live in very poor homes, with inadequate basis necessities. This average varies according to region. In Buenos Aires poor people make up 9.3 percent of the population, but in Formosa, in the northeast, the figure is 41.5 percent.

The study found that women make up 49.5 percent of primary school students, 51 percent of high school students, 77 percent of non-university higher education students and 47 percent of university students.

While students, women tend to opt less for technical careers in favor of humanistic or assistants’ positions, which are more closely identified with women’s traditional roles as nannies and maids.

Bonder’s work also reveals that, in study programs, women do not learn about their rights as women, are unaware of the struggle of other women to achieve equal opportunities and are not interested in positions of leadership, with exceptions.

“School does not offer subjects of interest to women, such as pregnancy, drugs, AIDS and homosexuality, and it doesn’t motivate women to exercise their rights to share in responsibilities of the home, from raising the children to doing household chores,” Bonder said.

This lack of information is expressed later in statistics in the labor market, where women are discriminated against. Young women between 15 and 24 years old have an unemployment rate of 39 percent, double the rate of young men of the same age.

A brief tour of Buenos Aires shows most young women working in fast-food chains, supermarkets, as waitresses in bars frequented by men, and more and more as demonstrators of products and services at conventions.

In this last case, employees are contracted per project, and the pay stops when the job is done, until another job appears. In every case, the young women are told to have a “good presence,” a euphemism that means they should be pretty and with a body that looks good in a short skirt.

“To get this job, I have to put on this mini-skirt. If I don’t put it on, another woman will come along and put it on, and I will have to go look for other opportunities,” said one young woman, 23, who waits tables in a bar.

Far from the cultural model of social ascension that ensures that young women have a better career than their mothers, 38 percent of women between 15 and 19-years-old are today employed in domestic service, even when they have achieved a higher level of education than their parents.

Sandra, 23, just got a job with a family who contracted her as a live-in domestic servant. In an interview with IPS, Sandra, the daughter of a woman who worked the same job her whole life, confessed that she had been looking for work for an entire year.

Ana, her employer, seemed surprised. “Sandra finished high school, studied computers and she told me she likes to dedicate her free time to studying English.” Despite her qualifications, she was hired at 350 dollars per month, which is below the minimum wage.

“Young women are confronting enormous limitations even for low skilled professions, such as domestic service where there are many applicants including many overqualified ones,” explained Bonder.

As for health, a study of adolescents in the Argerich Hospital of Buenos Aires reveals that 47 percent of the women used no method at all to prevent pregnancy, despite the fact that only 17 percent wanted to have children. Teenage pregnancy is growing. In the 1960s, 10 percent of pregnant women were under 20 years of ages, while in the 1990s the proportion has risen to 15 percent.

In the studies, young women seem to be worried about AIDS. Fifty percent of all women with the disease are under 25 years old.

But in spite all of these characteristics, Bonder reported, policies geared toward young women continue to steer them toward traditional and assistant jobs, without taking into account the “real” young woman, one who has problems of employment, education and health. (FIN/IPS/mv/dg/pr/dtk/mk/97)

Excerpt:

By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Oct 2 1997 (IPS)

For most of the world, glamorous model Valeria Mazza and tennis star Gabriela Sabatini are typical of young Aregentinean women. Not so, according to feminist researchers who say statistics tell a very different story.

In Argentina 38 percent of working women between 15 and 19 years are domestic employees with little chance to advance in a caree, say the researchers.

Invisible to the media, these women have employment problems, or work under conditions of exploitation, are vulnerable to AIDS, lack sexual education and suffer from bulimia and anorexia in their desperate effort to imitate the “models”, according to the women’s groups.

The latest data on women in Argentina has been collected by the Center for Women’s Studies, which conducted a study on “Young Women and their Living Conditions.” It was directed by sociologist Gloria Bonder, with the idea of getting to know “real” young women and then coming up with policies specifically suited to their needs.

“There is a face of youth which is the face of a model, and all young men and women who do not conform to this scheme are considered deviant, marginal and so on…” Bonder said.

Many adults believe young women “don’t know what they want…they are “hysterical, only care about being thin and pretty,” or they “they are material…frivolous.” Such criticism is unwarranted, according to Bonder’s studies.

In Argentina, 23 per cent of the country’s 33 million people are aged between 15 and 29 years of age, and half of this group is women. That is to say, there are some four million young women in Argentina living very different lives to those of the more famous.

The survey showed 25 per cent of the young women live in very poor homes, with inadequate basis necessities. This average varies according to region. In Buenos Aires poor people make up 9.3 percent of the population, but in Formosa, in the northeast, the figure is 41.5 percent.

The study found that women make up 49.5 percent of primary school students, 51 percent of high school students, 77 percent of non-university higher education students and 47 percent of university students.

While students, women tend to opt less for technical careers in favor of humanistic or assistants’ positions, which are more closely identified with women’s traditional roles as nannies and maids.

Bonder’s work also reveals that, in study programs, women do not learn about their rights as women, are unaware of the struggle of other women to achieve equal opportunities and are not interested in positions of leadership, with exceptions.

“School does not offer subjects of interest to women, such as pregnancy, drugs, AIDS and homosexuality, and it doesn’t motivate women to exercise their rights to share in responsibilities of the home, from raising the children to doing household chores,” Bonder said.

This lack of information is expressed later in statistics in the labor market, where women are discriminated against. Young women between 15 and 24 years old have an unemployment rate of 39 percent, double the rate of young men of the same age.

A brief tour of Buenos Aires shows most young women working in fast-food chains, supermarkets, as waitresses in bars frequented by men, and more and more as demonstrators of products and services at conventions.

In this last case, employees are contracted per project, and the pay stops when the job is done, until another job appears. In every case, the young women are told to have a “good presence,” a euphemism that means they should be pretty and with a body that looks good in a short skirt.

“To get this job, I have to put on this mini-skirt. If I don’t put it on, another woman will come along and put it on, and I will have to go look for other opportunities,” said one young woman, 23, who waits tables in a bar.

Far from the cultural model of social ascension that ensures that young women have a better career than their mothers, 38 percent of women between 15 and 19-years-old are today employed in domestic service, even when they have achieved a higher level of education than their parents.

Sandra, 23, just got a job with a family who contracted her as a live-in domestic servant. In an interview with IPS, Sandra, the daughter of a woman who worked the same job her whole life, confessed that she had been looking for work for an entire year.

Ana, her employer, seemed surprised. “Sandra finished high school, studied computers and she told me she likes to dedicate her free time to studying English.” Despite her qualifications, she was hired at 350 dollars per month, which is below the minimum wage.

“Young women are confronting enormous limitations even for low skilled professions, such as domestic service where there are many applicants including many overqualified ones,” explained Bonder.

As for health, a study of adolescents in the Argerich Hospital of Buenos Aires reveals that 47 percent of the women used no method at all to prevent pregnancy, despite the fact that only 17 percent wanted to have children. Teenage pregnancy is growing. In the 1960s, 10 percent of pregnant women were under 20 years of ages, while in the 1990s the proportion has risen to 15 percent.

In the studies, young women seem to be worried about AIDS. Fifty percent of all women with the disease are under 25 years old.

But in spite all of these characteristics, Bonder reported, policies geared toward young women continue to steer them toward traditional and assistant jobs, without taking into account the “real” young woman, one who has problems of employment, education and health. (FIN/IPS/mv/dg/pr/dtk/mk/97)

Excerpt: