Valen Iricibar 
The Argentine Chamber of Deputies unanimously voted to repeal a 1924 law actively barring women from working a plethora of jobs, going so far as to forbid them from working nights. Although the law isn’t meaningfully enforced across the labor market, addressing the legal disparity is being celebrated as a step towards women having more rights.
“We need to improve women’s access to the labor market, diminish the informal economy, and create public policies that accompany women’s careers, achieving greater recognition in terms of formality and wages,” said Silvia Lospennato, deputy for the opposition PRO party. Lospennato presented one of the bills to repeal the law, which was merged with two others by ruling coalition Frente de Todos (FdT) deputies Vanesa Siley and Lucila Masin.
Article 9 of Law 11.317, ostensibly designed to protect women and minors, stipulates that they are forbidden from working in “dangerous or unhealthy industries or tasks.”
The ensuing clarifications of what, exactly, those dangerous tasks were (articles 10 and 11) are what have garnered the most attention. Until today, Argentine women were not legally allowed to work after 8 p.m. —unless they were nurses, domestic workers, or entertainers—, make or sell alcohol, work in quarries or underground, handle circular saws, operate cranes or machinery, be firefighters, use harsh chemicals or do glassblowing, among other things.
In the early hours of today, deputies unanimously voted to repeal both Law 11.317 and the decree with its regulations (Decree 2.699) with 153 in favor, none against, and no abstentions.
“Our present-day makes us reassess those patriarchal stereotypes that translate to the working world as the discrimination that we as women live through and suffer,” said Siley when she addressed the house. She pointed out that although women currently work in jobs prohibited by the law, the legislation is often used to exclude women from certain job sectors, using dock workers as the prime example.
“The idea behind repealing this law is to open women’s range of possibilities and to highlight the underpaid and hidden work that we do.”
The next stop is the Senate where the law is hoped, almost 100 years on, to be resoundingly voted out.
