experience and knowledge to obtain other types of work in the labor market. NTAEs and

the flower industry take the best period of women's lives, the time when they are

physically strong, and therefore they are eager to be part of social production. But flower

work does not provide an equivalent benefit to women. This work offers only an

unrealistic sense of stability and well being that vanishes after few years.

 Under the related circumstances it is worthwhile to ask if flower employment is an

illusion for women. A possible response from any impartial observer could be positive,

affirming that a disadvantageous job like flower employment is simply a mirage. But for

the thousands of women workers that have rotated through flower industry for more than

one decade, it was not a mirage. It was the only work option they could reach.

 Employment as it previously had been,3 was a source not only of income, but also

of career opportunities, social networks, knowledge, stability, and social security for

workers. However flower agribusiness, the most successful non-traditional agricultural

export industry of Ecuador, has systematically avoided providing other benefits than a

limited income to women workers, who are its main work force. The failure by the flower

industry in providing career opportunities for women reinforces the perception that

women's activities are taken as irrelevant for development. Like similar international

experiences analyzed by Charseworth & Wright (1991), women in flower agribusiness

are found in the lowest status jobs, without career paths.

 Beyond the local foci of this thesis, in a national-international view, it is evident

that despite the enormous theoretical analysis of women's conditions, and the democratic

and human rights protection trends, which are a common coin of all the international


3 The labor laws in Ecuador before the structural adjustments guaranteed stability, minimum wages, annual
vacation and other rights to workers.