Name: SIMONE VALADARES CAMPOS
Publication date: 27/06/2025
Examining board:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| AMANDA SOARES ZAMBELLI FERRETTI | Examinador Externo |
| ANA CAROLINA JÚLIO DA SILVA | Examinador Externo |
| JULIANA CRISTINA TEIXEIRA | Presidente |
| LETICIA DIAS FANTINEL | Examinador Interno |
| VANÊSSA SILVEIRA PEREIRA SIMON | Examinador Externo |
Summary: Objective: This thesis analyzes how telework of women in the Brazilian public sector reinforces gendered practices and performances of care and how these performances were intersectionally impacted in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Theoretical approach: Post-Structuralism and Intersectionality acted both as epistemological and procedural bases, in a dialogical approach highlighting the concepts of performativity, heterosexual matrix and doing and undoing gender. Method: As for the methodological paths, this is a qualitative research based on semi-structured individual interviews which were submitted to a discourse analysis in an intersectional perspective. Results: The categories “mental burden and division of household chores”, “sexuality” and “motherhood” emerged in the discourse analysis. In addition, the category of gender permeated all discussions, following the criteria of underinclusion and overinclusion. Some ways of doing and undoing gender became evident: a) when women are not mothers, the leading role in care work remains with their own mothers, when they still live with them; b) when they are mothers, they become protagonists of care work; and c) women who are in non-heterosexual relationships perform collective or shared gender performances in care, and the mental burden component does not appear, denoting a smaller asymmetry in the distribution of power in these dynamics. Conclusions: It is evidenced that interviewees who have children or who are in a heterosexual relationship had their gender performances linked to care work reinforced, enabling new forms of oppression and identity interdiction. For interviewees who are in a non-heterosexual relationship and confined with their wives, sexual inequality marker emerged as a privilege, contrary to what has become normalized outside the pandemic context. In these social microcosms brought about by the rare or extreme event of the pandemic, in which new relational dynamics were configured, non-compliance with the heteronormative matrix became a privilege. Thus, it became evident that teleworking by female public employees contributes to a gendered practice linked to performances of caring for the home and others, which is reinforced by the presence of social markers such as motherhood and sexuality, and by the interaction between them.
