Fruits of Burden–The Organisation of Women Temporary Workers in Chilean Agribusiness

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, rural women in the central region of Chile have experienced a radical change in their situation. Traditionally they played a subordinate position within the rural division of labour, with their primary role in the home and much of their work being unremunerated. Today women play a key role at the forefront of Chilean agricultural export production as independent waged temporary workers. Every year tens of thousands of women, the temporeras, are mobilised to work in the fruit sector, sustaining Chile’s prominence as an exporter of out-of-season fruit to the north during its winter months. Many of these women have entered the labour force for the first time, are able to earn some of the highest wages in the sector and are dependent on their wage labour for their own survival and that of their families. Outside the season, however, there is very little alternative work for them, and they are subject to high levels of unemployment and poverty. Agribusiness has simultaneously reversed and exploited the traditional division of labour, as women have to combine productive and reproductive work in the season, but are forced to return to their traditional role in the home during the winter, remaining a reliable source of labour to be tapped again every year.