Mulheres embarcadas: gênero, família e trabalho na percepção de mulheres em espaços masculinos

Abstract

This dissertation had as objective to examine the relation between women participation in masculine work ambient and gender. Our case study is focused on the research of offshore women, women whose work is executed on petroleum platforms. In this work situation, they leave the daily routine they use to have onshore to spend fourteen days onboard, a place where home and work are mingled. For such purposes, we selected a qualitative analysis, based on offshore women s point of view about the relation of their lives in and outside the platform. Therefore, we firstly undertook a discussion which main themes were the imbrications between gender and work, and we assumed as conceptual-theoretic references trajectory and habitus concepts, formulated by Pierre Bourdieu. Through semi-structured interviews and internet and personal talks, we collected offshore women testimonial, which permitted us to analyze perceptions, meanings and representations in their speech. Thus, we observed that there is a close relation between paid work and family life in offshore women s choices and opinions. They see woman presence in family life as fundamental; hence, they perceive offshore work as incompatible to the responsibilities they take in family, particularly in motherhood. Offshore women believe wife and husband can find alternatives in case the woman doesn t leave the platform, but such alternatives are shown as unviable when children come. They value paid work, and are not willing to leave it any time during their trajectories: what they desire is stopping embarking in order to conciliate motherhood and work. In these terms, the entrance of women in labor market and their participation in male dominant ambient don t lead them into a total adhesion to more egalitarian gender values, but into a (re)actualization of male and female traditional roles, based on the experiences they have been facing.