Trabalhadoras domésticas brasileiras: entre continuidades coloniais e resistências

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the performance of the coloniality of power and gender within the Brazilian domestic work. For this, part of building a picture of what the current domestic work entails in the country using statistical data. As a way of complementing and in order to give dynamism to the picture, rigid in its essence, different narratives by domestic workers regarding domestic work were used. Among the chosen narratives are the life stories of three former workers. These reports show that the recollection of experiences is a method for the construction of self and important form of resistance. The picture taken of domestic work shows the following characteristics: shows that the work is performed mostly by poor women of colour, in subordinate position. Thus, the categories that historically identify it are gender, race/colour and sexual division of labour and therefore should be examined together, revealing the intersectionality within the domestic work. To affirm the persistence of a colonial logic, a historic assembly of the domestic labour relations from the Brazilian slavery period to the present day is made, from total denial of rights to the PEC das Domésticas. This historical review of domestic work was produced from a selection of speeches, of domestic workers, politicians, ordinary citizens and jurists about the domestic work, relations that involve it and its lack of regulation. The speeches showed that there is a continuity in the Brazilian domestic work relations, involving affection, gratitude, denial and lack of rights. Sexual and racial division of labour that sets the housework implies gender and racial domination, established in conjunction with the Brazilian colonization and that modelled the way to design and perceive the colonial/modern world. This world system ranked the colonized population and defined standards and social roles. Thus, racialized women were doubly subordinated and silenced. However, even if the standard established by the colonial/modern system still operates through power and coloniality of gender, feminism, as a language, translates the practices of resistance of the subaltern women, whether in their narratives, whether in the fight for labour rights. Finally, the decolonial feminist praxis is an instrument for a real decolonization.