Who benefits from women's availability?: Relations between gender, work and family

Author(s)

Taís Viudes de Freitas

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2016-03-28

Examining board members

Maria Lygia Quartim de Moraes; Claudia Maria França Mazzei Nogueira; Felícia Silva Picanço; Liliana Rolfsen Petrilli Segnini; Bárbara Castro

• Advisor: Maria Lygia Quartim de Moraes

Abstract

The present research analyses the consequences of labour relations flexibility on workers¿ experience in the productive sphere as well as its effects on daily and family life. For this purpose, this study focuses two professional activities: that of the telemarketing operator and the super/hypermarket cashier. The choice of those professions is justified by the strong presence of women in their workforce and by the fact that companies in those sectors frequently resort to continuous adjustments in working organization, setting it according to the production and clients flows. This kind of practice is part of a wider process of increasing flexibility of labour relations. Changes in Brazilian labour laws gave companies more liberty to hire and fire employees, change their activities, adopt variable wage according to the workers¿ individual performance, and extend, reduce or modify their working time. Therefore, the central elements of work become more unpredictable and diverse. The result for workers is the requirement of more engagement and availability for the productive sphere, affecting how they experience work and the meaning they give to it. However, effects of these new dynamics transcend the productive sphere, also influencing daily and familiar life. Men and women do not experience those effects the same way, women being particularly affected by flexibility. As a result of the sexual division of labour, women are more likely to occupy underpaid jobs, that require less instruction, besides being mainly responsible for doing housework and care. The need for reconciling work and family life is still a women¿s issue. In this research, we analyze the strategies women adopt to achieve that reconciling, in the context of a varying working time and facing continuous adjustments in their activities, wages and timetables. The availability issue appeared as an important element to comprehend the relations between work, gender and reconciling of work and family (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 11/06611-6 - The challenges of reconciling working and family life among female workers subject to flexible working hours
• Grantee: Tais Viudes de Freitas
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate