ILPC 2026

Catalina Arteaga, PhD. Political and Social Sciences, specialty in Sociology, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Manuela Abarca, Sociologist, Universidad de Chile.

Graciela Madrid, Sociologist, Universidad de Chile.

Belén Pozo, Sociologist, Universidad de Chile

The presentation aims to address, from women worker’s narrations of middle and low groups in Chile, the link between her maternity and construction of their labor identity experiences. Based on the research carried out in the FONDECYT project "Positional Experiences: Subjectivities in the Social Transformation of Chile", we conclude there are two ways in which this link shape their narrations and perceptions of themselves: the resolution of family/work conflict and the importance of the mother in social class position.

The issue was approached from a qualitative methodology trough the production and analysis of discourse of working women from different social groups. With this purpose, they were produced individuals techniques –semi-structured interviews – and collective’s ones – discussion groups. Twenty-five interviews have been conducted with women in Coquimbo, O’Higgins, Valparaíso and Metropolitan region. At the same time, there have been produced three discussion groups in the Gran Santiago.

One of the biggest stressors of women's work trajectories (and also of the experience of motherhood) is the family-work conflict. The investigation concludes that motherhood has a neuralgic role in the project of feminine life, prescribing possibilities of social positioning and generating tensions with the professional and labor development. The ways of expressing, meaning and solving this tension, are differentiated according to the social group. According to this differentiation, women build stories about their work identity, linked in a profound way to their experiences of motherhood. For women from marginal groups, the labor-maternity bond generates a strongly fragmented identity between success and failure: the achievement of an economically responsible motherhood, as opposed to the feeling of guilt for the lack of presence. This tension is resolved by forming an identity of "working and sacrificed women". In middle groups, the work identity is more linked to the duality maternity / professionalism, where personal growth and economic independence become central in their work trajectories, forming part of their senses of success. Such senses of success are stressed by motherhood, where the notion of sacrifice points, in this case, to a choice of children and family care over professional development. On the other hand, the family-work conflict expressed in the female labor trajectories intersects with an imaginary construction of the mother as that figure that not only sustains the social positioning in families, but also made it possible. The "mother" thus becomes a central element in social positioning.

The current presentation aims to be a contribution to gender and work identity discussion, in contexts of strongly masculinized labors. Deepening in the women and labor world link, pretends to be an input to the discussion of motherhood-work tension. Seeking to reveal class distinctions in the ways that women resolve that tension and construct their labor identities