Ratsch, Valeria (2025) Harassment and violence faced by Latinas on Ontario construction industry work sites. PhD thesis, University of Toronto, Canada.
Abstract
The aim of my dissertation is to examine the Harassment and Violence (HV) that Latinas face while working in the Ontario Construction Industry (OCI). I was specifically interested in the toxic impact HV has on Latina worker's professional careers, as well as their personal lives. My qualitative research interviews (pláticas) with fourteen Latina construction workers, provided me with the capacity to explain how the labour they perform, and the legal invisibility by which they are defined, systematically combine to disenfranchise Latinas. I explain how the hyper-visible identity of Latinas on job sites, compounds the invisibility of their labour, even as language barriers significantly diminish their individual capacity to report and combat HV effectively. This dissertation also illuminates the persistent state of vulnerability (harassment, wage theft, and/or working in dangerous conditions) experienced by Latinas working without status in the OCI. I open with a literature review illuminating my uniquely intersectional, methodological position as a Canadian-born, Spanish-speaking academic researcher with more than two decades of experience working as a safety inspector in the OCI. My pláticas with fourteen Latinas working in the OCI reveal how workplace dynamics and regulatory inconsistencies contribute to their vulnerability to supervisory exploitation and discrimination from co-workers. The concepts of tokenism, intersectionality, and the conditionality of precarious status help explain how systemic labour policies have placed women in positions where following workplace regulations can inadvertently reinforce their collective marginalization. I found that the toxic, racialized, gendered culture of the OCI is reproduced even when women receive status, such as in the case of supervisors. I recommend a systemic shift in the culture of the OCI which keeps HV underground and normalizes the approach to Latina women in the industry. My dissertation concludes by recommending that support groups, operating outside of state structures, should be funded to serve as the frontline of protection.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Mirchandani, Kiran |
| Index terms: | dissertation, construction worker, supervisor, construction industry, women, identity, dynamics, exploitation, discrimination, vulnerability, regulation, career, qualitative research, face, literature review, interview, theft |
| Subjects: | data analysis and analytics, data collection methods, research design and methodology, industry analysis, political science, systems engineering, sociology, professional development, management, psychology, practitioner, criminal law, research dissemination and communication, professional ethics, environmental hazards |
| Topics: | Legal Issues, Sustainability, Engineering Principles, Organizational Design, Roles and Professions, Governance, Business Strategy, Information Management, Research Practice |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here