Empowerment and discipline in tension. A study on women retail union leaders, La Araucanía Region, Chile

Abstract

An article template and instructions on the editorial process and the text, images, figures and/or tables and bibliography format are provided. This article contributes to the knowledge of female unionism in Retail in the Araucanía region, with emphasis on the tensions experienced by the leaders regarding their leadership. It is about analyzing, specifically, the complexities between empowerment, self- demanding and gender discipline in which they develop their experience as the first women union leaders in Retail in the study region. To this end, women leaders belonging to the National Federation of Retail Unions (FESIR) of Araucanía were interviewed. The results show that being union leaders and women would change the subjectivity of the workers themselves and gender dynamics in the context of collective action, based on the empowerment they experience, and thus position their ideas in a traditionally masculinized union world. Among the results, it stands out that the leaders are exposed to a naturalized self-demand, in many cases self- indulgent; and they exercise an overflowing motherhood, based on a positive self-concept that “they can do anything”. Finally, paid work does not operate as a space that pauses the “responsibility” of care tasks, but rather overlaps to the point of converging through its conciliation in the workday itself.