ARGENTINA: More Women Head Households, but With Less Money

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 13 1998 (IPS) - The percentage of Argentinian households whose main breadwinners are women has increased from 9.5 to 25 since 1991, when unemployment started rising in the Southern American country.

However, women who are the main breadwinners earn 30 percent less than men in similar situations, according to the latest annual survey by the National Institute for Statistics and Census.

Women bring in most of the family income in 90,000 of the 3.5 million homes in and around the Argentine capital.

This trend mirrors a process underway throughout the region: according to a report by the Inter American Development Bank, 30 percent of Latin American households are headed by women. In Argentina, however, the phenomenon is linked to economic stability, which has encouraged women to join the labour market.

The inflation rate has remained stable since 1991, but with price stability came rising unemployment, which went from six to 18.4 percent in three years. It has since gone down to 13.4 percent, but partly as a result of an increase in insecure and temporary jobs subsidized by the state.

As a result of this trend, women are the biggest earners in 25 percent of all households. However, the average monthly income for such women is 930 dollars, while male household heads average 1,300 dollars, a difference of almost 30 percent.

The director of the National Institute of Statistics, Hector Montero, explained that most women who support their families are in low-paying sectors like the domestic service and piecework sewing, or do work for unlicensed outfits, such as many cleaning companies.

Wenceslada Ledesma, a domestic worker, has a fixed monthly salary of 500 dollars, plus overtime, whereas her husband earns 400 dollars as a policeman. She also accepts work in other houses on Saturdays or very early in the morning. Ledesma says her husband has children from a previous marriage whom he helps to maintain. Her sister and brother, who came to Buenos Aires from the interior to look for work, are also living in the house.

Such arrangements are not found only among the poor. Increasingly, professional middle-class women are becoming the main breadwinners in their households. Some are single mothers, widows or divorcees, others are women whose husbands are unemployed, and still others are retired women who maintain their families with their pensions.

“When I separated from my husband, we worked it out so that he would pay the tuition for our two children, and I would take care of the rest,” said Patricia de Miguel, an accountant who makes more than 3,000 dollars a month. Her husband, a lawyer, has an irregular income, and she prefers him to commit himself to paying at least for the education of the children, who live with her five days a week.

Some experts point out that women whose husbands are out of work go out and look for jobs, just about any jobs, in order to make up for the loss of income. Men, on the other hand, are more selective about accepting a job because they have experience.

In such cases, women maintain their households on salaries that are usually less than 300 dollars a month, barely one-fourth of the amount the average family needs to survive, according to the National Institute of Statistics.