Psychic and Somatic Vulnerability among Professional Women in Argentina as a Result of the Precarization of Labor Linked During the Socioeconomic Crisis

Abstract

This article deals with the effects of the worsening conditions—a deterioration of the economy, the precarization of labor conditions and general social decline—on the subjectivity of middle-class women with high levels of education in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area. Based on data collected through in-depth interviews and focus groups, situations of psychological and somatic vulnerability are discerned through the interpretation of experiences, feelings, and emotions. Transformations in the labor market in Argentina have been a determining factor as well as a consequence of the new economic model, and have caused the precarization of working conditions and of life in general. A degradation in the political apparatus, which causes great uncertainty, has exacerbated this situation. This situation, and the speed at which it has taken place, has generated negative consequences for the women’s subjectivity, demonstrated in a decline in self-esteem and an alteration in thought processes.