Maestras, pero trabajadoras: regulación y prácticas de licencias en la escuela profesional provincial de mujeres (Córdoba, primera mitad del siglo XX)

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze female teachers’ self-perception as rights-bearing subjects and State employees in a provincial vocational school for women, in the context of the debates surrounding the implementation of national and provincial legislation regulating women’s labor (Law 5291/1907 and Law 2790/1919). Through the examination of leave requests submitted by these teacher-workers, we reconstruct their arguments for requesting various types of leave and economic benefits established under the regulatory frameworks governing women’s labor and public employment in the province of Córdoba, Argentina. This issue is particularly compelling given that the institution was part of a provincial educational and labor project aimed at providing moral and technical training to impoverished women in trades, with the goal of enabling them to become self-sufficient. The primary subjects of this study are vocational (trade) teachers, and to a lesser extent, elementary education teachers, since the institution offered professional training beyond the level of primary education. Throughout the article, we explore the claims made by these teachers in order to understand how they interpreted and articulated their labor rights, the positions from which they spoke as rights-bearing individuals, and their relationship to social policies and state protections for working mothers.