Are Worker-Owned Cooperatives ‘Gendered Organizations’? The Case of Hotel BAUEN in Argentina

• In Event: 315 - Regular Session. Producing Gender at Work

Abstract

The theory of gendered organizations was developed to explain how and why gender inequality is reproduced in the workplace. This influential theory was based on the study of capitalist for-profit and non-profit work organizations. In this article, we apply the theory to understand the gender dynamics in a worker-owned cooperative in Argentina. Hotel BAUEN was occupied and recovered by workers facing the threat of job loss due to an impending bankruptcy. Drawing on ethnographic research, we find that the workers organized themselves on the basis of gender but did not place different value on men’s and women’s labor. In this case, gender differences produced by occupational segregation and informal interactions apparently do not translate into gender inequality of wages or power. Hotel BAUEN is a gendered organization, but because it is based in an alternative logic, women are paid the same as men, and have equal access to power and authority. We discuss the implications of this finding for the theory of gendered organizations.

Authors

• Katie Sobering, University of Texas-Austin

• Christine L. Williams, University of Texas-Austin

• Jessica Michelle Thomas, University of California-Davis