Cuidado (in)subordinado: convergências para uma crítica feminista à subordinação no direito do trabalho

Abstract

This research examines subordination as a central factual-legal element for the recognition of an employment relationship and the consequent protection of labor law, from the perspective of the complexity of care work in the home by domestic and care workers, whether salaried or not, considering the relations of exploitation, oppression, and dependence. In light of the sexual division of labor, the contradiction between capital and care, and the dimensions of care work, we question how the doctrinal construction of legal subordination has left the reality of care work out of its analysis. We understand the way subordination operates to recognize or refuse rights to women care workers, creating unequal treatment within the same category, how it masks labor exploitation and gender oppression, and how it attempts to homogenize labor relations, disregarding the complexity of emotional and subjective relations. For this purpose, taking the field of feminist caregiving studies as our theoretical reference, we conducted a specialized literature review on the topic of care work from an interdisciplinary perspective, and on legal subordination based on the classic works of Brazilian labor law. We formulated a feminist critique of legal subordination in the light of care and domestic work in three main directions: first, subordination in the face of the personal subjection of female workers; second, subordination beyond the artificiality of the subordination-autonomy binomial; third, subordination that ratifies the division between paid and free care among domestic workers. In the end, we conclude on the importance of continuing to reflect expansively on subordination and Labor Law to reflect on the ways of truly insubordinate care.