Abstract

HERRERA LEON, Fabián. The Working Conditions of Mexican Women and Minors: The Study Trips of Marguerite Thibert (1939-1942). En-clav. pen [online]. 2023, vol.17, n.33, e551.  Epub May 12, 2023. ISSN 2594-1100.  https://doi.org/10.46530/ecdp.v0i33.551.

At the end of 1939, and the beginning of World War II, the French feminist activist and International Labor Office (BIT) officer, Marguerite Thibert (1886-1982), undertook a first research trip to Mexico, taking advantage of her participation in the American Labor Conference in Havana (November 1939). Two years later she would return, hired by the Mexican government to carry out research focused on the informal work of minors and their living conditions. Thibert’s highly specialized and little-known work would allow this high-ranking official and referent in the ILO for the rights of women and minors to gain a more thorough knowledge of the process of social institutionalization that was taking place in the country through the new Secretariat of Labor and Social Welfare created by Ignacio García Téllez, the main architect of the Mexican Social Security Institute (1943). Thibert would have the opportunity to propose important modifications to this project before leaving Mexico in 1942.

Keywords : Marguerite Thibert; International Labour Office (BIT); female and child labor; Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social; Comisión Investigadora de la Situación de la Mujer y de los Menores Trabajadores.