Trabalho de cuidado doméstico em três gerações de mulheres moradoras de periferia

Abstract

This study contributes to the ongoing discussions in Brazil, Latin America, and the rest of the world about domestic care, which has historically been predominantly attributed to women and is intrinsically linked to socioeconomic and racial inequalities, resulting in a significant social impact due to the failure to recognize this care as a form of paid work. This work is an extension of a previous study entitled “The occupations of older women in the daily lives of social vulnerability”, which served as the basis for the present investigation. This Cross-Sectional Qualitative Study aims to understand the perception of three generations of women (grandmothers, mothers, and daughters) about the configuration of domestic care work relationships in their daily lives within a community in a situation of social vulnerability (Vila Marçola – Aglomerado da Serra, in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais). The participants include two daughters and two granddaughters of two elderly women interviewed in the previous study, who met the inclusion criteria: being daughters and granddaughters of the grandmothers who participated in the previous study; mothers of any age group; granddaughters aged 18 or over; and, as exclusion criteria, limiting factors or the lack of physical, psychological or contextual conditions that would make participation in the interviews unfeasible were considered. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data, the results of which were analyzed through thematic content analysis. The results revealed the perpetuation of unpaid domestic care work in the three generations of women – grandmothers, daughters and granddaughters, organized into the following categories: the contextualization of the lives of grandmothers, daughters and granddaughters; the experiences of unpaid domestic care work; the experiences and perspectives on paid domestic care work; the inclusion of domestic care work performed by women in Brazil; and learning about care in generational experiences. With this study, it was possible to observe that there were no significant changes in relation to the responsibilities attributed to care activities throughout the generations.