Ghosts in the Machines: Gender, Technology, and Labor in the Lima Telephone Operators Strike of 1931

In September of 1931, economic chaos, unrest, and an upcoming presidential election made Lima, Peru a tense city – and that was before the telephones stopped working. The switchboard operators - nearly all of them women - of the Compañia Peruana de Teléfonos went on strike after they claimed that several of their coworkers were unfairly fired. The history of this overlooked strike illustrates the interplay between labor, technology, and gender. Assigned to work at switchboards because of their gender, the women at the phone company suddenly found themselves able to exert demands because of their labor at a critical point of Peru’s technological infrastructure. Yet, even as they demonstrated their strength, the switchboard operators often remained invisible as the government and the media searched for the “real” leaders behind the strike and the women struggled to establish alliances with male-dominated unions in other sectors. The 1931 telephone strike illustrates how gendered labor roles could lead to unpredictable consequences when combined with the growing power of communications technology in the twentieth century.