flower businessmen translated into high levels of productivity, are "feminine qualities"

that are an advantage in comparison with male workers (Mena Pozo 1999: 83). These

supposed female traits have been used to justify women's indispensability in some phases

of flower production. Noel (1998) relates that efforts towards mechanization have been

unsuccessful in Ecuadorian flower plantations due to the delicate nature of the product

which requires more sensitive handling than machines have been able to provide (Noel

1998: 23).

 The extremely fragility of flowers and the specific standards of the flower market

force the flower agribusinesses to maintain a work team flexible enough to perform

repetitive and tedious tasks. For example, once harvested, a flower cannot remain in

storage more than 24 hours before being shipped to the international markets. If that

happens the product must be discarded. During such time, flower's quality features

(color, size, freshness, etc.) must be checked one by one, and workers must be willing

and able to deal with such tiresome tasks. Women workers carry out these activities in

physical isolation and rarely interact with other workers for hours at a time. Mena Pozo

(1999) claims that such tasks are given exclusively to women workers due to their

agricultural experience and lower level of education (Mena Pozo 1999: 45).

 But the "indispensability" of women for some flower production phases can be

unmasked by the fact, as explained by Mena Pozo (1999), that in some flower plantations

with advanced technologies, where workers have better labor guarantees and salaries, the

presence of female workers is not as preponderant as on other plantations (Mena Pozo

1999: 85). That means that flower agribusinesses use positive and negative gender biases

to justify both the contracting preference for women and their lower salaries. Some