Home Office: gender and flexibility in the IT sector

• Grant number: 16/01992-5
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: June 01, 2016
• End date: May 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Bárbara Geraldo de Castro
• Grantee: Bárbara Geraldo de Castro
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the homework from one of its contemporary facets: its use by the service sector. I aim to research the so called productive work done in the home space by men and women classified in their socio-professional context as qualified, operating in the Information Technology (IT) sector, and marking their work experience from a lexicon that differs from the typical homework experience: in the emic language, this kind of work is named as Home Office.I aim to understand how the practice of the Home Office is elaborated, in speech and in practice, as an enterprise policy, and what are the senses, meanings and uses attributed to this policy by men and women that are embedded in them. The idea of flexibility will be faced from a non-dual perspective that shall articulate autonomy and heteronomy and will be seen as a social process that produces and is produced by gender. I intend to contribute to the field of labor and gender studies by visualizing the social mechanisms that updates the (re) production of the sexual division of labor, the class hierarchies and those of consent. The family unit and its relationship to the work will be the starting point of the analysis. The investigation will also takes into account the discussions on time uses and intersectionality. (AU)