Relações de gênero e trabalho feminino : experiências, sentidos e subjetividades das mulheres microempreendedoras individuais.

Abstract

This doctoral thesis is the result of a study on how gender relations compose the experience of women who act as individual microentrepreneurs in Santa Cruz do Sul. In the study, I analyze gender relations from four aspects: society, family, sexual division of labor, and the State, with the objective of understanding the repercussions of the asymmetrical relations that are established in these areas on the trajectories of women who act as MEIs. In the construction of the analysis I take into consideration that the relationship between individuals and society is not opposite, but complementary, thus the condition of women is not built in isolation, but as a result of gender asymmetries. Furthermore, territory is read from its relational aspect as a product and producer of these inequalities. To construct this problematization, I used the concepts of habitus, field, and capital to understand how gender asymmetries are constructed, reproduced, or tensioned, having women as active subjects, capable of mobilizing capitals with the potential to resignify and tense these inequalities. Based on semi-structured interviews with six women, and the systematization of secondary data on female entrepreneurship and micro-entrepreneurship in Santa Cruz do Sul, I analyzed the trajectories of these women in the labor market, their daily experiences in the family and in society, and the role of the State, where I highlight aspects related to race and social class, sexual orientation, maternity, unpaid domestic work, the labor market, and public policies. Based on the research carried out and the crossing of the theoretical accumulation with the empirical data, I emphasize in this thesis the way in which the asymmetric gender relations offer constraints to women who act as individual microentrepreneurs and, at the same time, the potential of these women to reshape their trajectories, producing resistance to these constraints based on the capitals they mobilize, from the education of their children, to their militancy in social movements, to their participation in collectives or cultural activities. Despite the conflicts, contradictions and limits imposed by gender relations and by race and social class crossings, these women (re)exist building change whether at work, in social movements or in their own families.