While for men occupation and location were certainly influenced by their ethnicity, for women the more important factor in finding paid employment in the oil industries of Astra and Y.P.F. was the family network.  Both companies inscribed this need for family ties in their stipulations for some paid female labor:  in Y.P.F. and Astra alike, only women who were daughters of tenured oil workers (minimum of 5 years with the company) or widows of former workers were eligible to gain employment in occupations such as office administration. But just as ethnic composition of the towns affected the work of males in particular networks, certain patterns arose in women's work according to their ethnicity.  

   

I n Astra, over 37% of the female work force from 1919-1945 were single women.  Moreover, their nationality was overwhelmingly German: of the twelve women, there were six German workers, one Austrian, one Polack, one Czech, and three Argentines.      This preponderance of German workers and secondary Argentine female laborers was in part due to the respective population sizes of the two groups.  But it was also a result of differing cultural assumptions about the nature of "women's work."  In general, the German tradition accepted the idea of women's work in transition from the father's house to the husband's house more so than either the Argentine or other European nationalities. However, both Argentine and German women were teachers, many of whom were young and unmarried.

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Ethnicity as a dimension in women's labor played out more markedly in Y.P.F for different ethnic groups.  For example, extra-domestic work among Italian women during the 1920s and '30s during the company town was virtually unheard of.  The one fairly "appropriate" female occupation, teaching, was not even approved of by many Italian families, with Southern Italian immigrants being the least accepting of women's work outside the home.

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Only under conditions of widowhood could most Italian women freely seek employment in these decades, which was usually cleaning the public bathrooms built by Y.P.F.  This case was considered an exception, since for most women the only reason for immigrating to and living in the company towns was to accompany their husbands, fathers, or other male relatives already working there.  Left without an income and potentially  without company housing, these widows were viewed more sympathetically and as a result were more accepted by the Italian community as paid workers in Y.P.F.  But overall strict gender roles continued to prevail; although some women that immigrated to the company from Italy later on in the '40s did work as clerks, nurses, or teachers, their number was comparatively small.

     Additionally, many Spanish and Portugese women in Y.P.F. took their "domestic" skills such as sewing and mending into the paid labor market.  They were hired as seamstresses and tailors in the workshops, or Talleres, of the company town starting in the 1920s.  Though this allowed women some autonomy in earning an income separate from their husbands, it was also confining, in that it was also problematic as "women's work" because it seemed to be an extension of their housework and role as mothers.