ABSTRACT
Housework and care work were seen as women’s responsibility. Some women worked, not just in the socially acceptable role as palliri, or widowed women who work outside the mine, sorting valuable ore from the mining rubble, but leading cuadrillas or groups of miners, down the mine. Women started looking for work and entered the labour market in greater numbers. Almost a third of all men worked in construction while a further 16.2 per cent worked as drivers. The literature suggests that Bolivian women in Argentina usually work in domestic work, trading, and garment manufacturing. A number of more upwardly mobile migrants were working in relatively more stable and better paid jobs, for example as bus drivers and nurses in Argentina or as engineers in Spain. Compared to the mining town, there was a convergence of men’s and women’s working lives so that in many cases, both worked and in some cases, women took over the breadwinning role.
