Women Workers and Petroleum Communities: Maids, Mucamas, Cooks, and Reds in Argentina during the Great Depression

This paper investigates the traditional definitions of categories of workers in Argentina during the Great Depression. It interrogates the categories of salaried workers, domestic workers, and reproductive labourers to examine the experience of women who lived and worked in the petroleum camps in Argentine Patagonia. Women earned their living as washerwomen, cooks, mucamas, maids and prostitutes, and their labour formed an integral part of the operations of Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF), Argentina’s national oil company, between 1922 and 1932. By examining their histories, this paper seeks to gain a more complete understanding of the nature of work in the oil industry and its gendered dimensions.