Occupational Risk and Masculinity: The Case of the Construction Industry in Spain
Marta Ibáñez
Claudia Narocki
DOI: 10.2190/WR.16.2.e
Abstract
The manual trades in construction in Spain have been characterized by their hard working conditions and high accident rates. They have also been viewed as part of a "low-road" model in terms of industrial development and of employment relations. The hiring of labor is carried out by means of small and very small subcontractors competing with each other, with atypical contracting practices and with strong competition among workers, little recognition for formal qualifications, and little power for the workers to engage with risk prevention or to negotiate working conditions in the workplace. This is coupled with the fact that the sector is almost entirely closed to women. Following the first part of this article, in which the elements under consideration are explained and contextualized, the article analyzes these relationships through in-depth interviews conducted in 2010 with women who had completed a two-year training course in the painting of finished construction and drywall that ended in 2004; most of them had experience in the industry. Their outsider's point of view gave us a perspective on the relationship between the labor market characteristics of the construction sector and the masculine subculture that dominates the work environment. We conclude that in the context of the industry's development pattern and "low-road" employment relations, the masculine work culture functions in two ways: it makes more tolerable (for men) the physical effort and forced acceptance of safety risks, and it helps to construct a "masculinity" that functions as a mechanism for the social exclusion of an entire social group, that of women, who encounter great difficulties integrating themselves.
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