Casais de dupla jornada: diferenças entre homens e mulheres frente à conciliação entre trabalho e família

Abstract

Women’s entry into production is considered one of the great revolutions observed in society. The social constructions that established throughout time the roles that men and women must play, destining public environment (production) for men and private environment for women (reproduction), even when both carry out a paid activity, still make house work be assigned to women. In view of this, the main objective of this research is to understand the differences between middle-class men and women who work outside the home, given the need to balance work and family. As this is an interpretative research, a qualitative approach consisting of semi-structured interviews was adopted and the content analysis technique was used (BARDIN, 2008) to handle data gathered in the field. The participants were middle class heterosexual couples, married or living together, with at least one child aged between 0 and 6 years old, who have a paid activity and live in the city of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais. To achieve the proposed objective, the answers from the interviews were paired (pattern-matching) with the theoretical framework, which focused on the concepts of sexual division of labor and gender. The gathered data highlighted women still shoulder the responsibility for house work, which causes them a work overload, not forgetting male involvement in these activities and in child care. Furthermore, it was evident that, in different ways, men and women face difficulties in balancing work and family, developing different strategies to be able to participate in the labor market.In this scenario, some activities taking part of the reproduction scope, therefore, considered socially as feminine, are outsourced in the pursuit of balancing work and family. In addition, private organizations sometimes do not have formal mechanisms to facilitate workers who need to undergo double burden.