Insights on Gender Through Argentinian Longitudinal Youth Research

Abstract

Work that extends beyond paid employment has received relatively littleattention in youth studies, supported by traditional “metaphors” of youth transitionthat define the path to successful adulthood with reference to integration into the labormarket. This approach significantly limits the possibilities for analysis of women’sbiographical paths, obscuring the dynamics of socio-gender structures that are stillvery active in western countries. This chapter therefore contributes to debate aboutyouth transitions through an invitation to reflect on alternative metaphors for the anal-ysis of young people’s transitions. We present an “intersectional” view of transitions,in which class and gender inequalities faced by young women in the Global Southare made visible. Based on a qualitative sample of young women who we describeas being in late generation X, who were born around the early 1980s, we reconstructfuller information about their transition to productive and/or reproductive work inArgentina. We discuss the different types of routes in youth transitions of womenfrom different social sectors, and we offer a contribution to the debate about ways toanalyze youth transitions considering the gender inequalities that persist in the labormarket and within the framework of the persistence of traditional gender patterns.