The Precarization of Women's Living Conditions in Spain (1995–2010): The Impact of the Crisis and Beyond

The crisis has had a big impact in Spain and specially on those who were already in increased precarity situations as women. But in order to understand women's situations in a time of crisis, we need a longitudinal analysis that show us the weakness of women positions and the precarization of their living conditions in the last years. The aim of this paper is to analyse the evolution of womens' living conditions and the process of precarization in Spain between 1995 and 2010. We will address the common hypothesis that women constitue a more precarious social group than men, and we will try to complex and research around that hypothesis. In a first moment, we will analyse women as a precarious group as a whole by using other recent researches done in Spain around mainly the work and labor conditions of women (Borderías, Carrasco y Torns, 2011; Torns, 2012) and the explotation of stadistical data, but we will try to look into differences among women depending on other social positions (employment, maternity, age, origin...). It is an attempt to show empirically the feminist theoretical proposals around the diversity of women by examining which variables explain more about those differences among women. In a second moment, we will centre our attention on the socio-economical dimension of precarity (employment, income and education levels) to analyse the paradoxes of a high level of precariousness among women in spite of the increase of women acceding the work place. This paradoxe certifies that the incorporation of women to the work place is always done in conditions of precarization of jobs (temporality, parcial jobs...); and that this process might not be separated from an analyse of major changes int he work place (politics of flexibility) that also afects thosw who were until now considered as "stables"