Em busca da igualdade: percepção de justiça e divisão do trabalho doméstico – mudanças e continuidades

Abstract

Tendo por objetivo identificar eventuais mudanças no tempo dedicado ao trabalho doméstico por homens e mulheres, no período de 12 anos, este artigo analisa as horas gastas por homens e mulheres no trabalho doméstico e a sua perceção da justiça dessa distribuição, através da comparação dos dados obtidos nos inquéritos do ISSP (International Social Survey Programme) sobre família e género de 2002 e 2012 (2014 em Portugal). Esta análise é precedida por uma revisão da investigação recente, em Portugal, integrando a divisão do trabalho doméstico nas várias dimensões que estruturam as relações de género, de modo a contribuir para um diagnóstico da extensão e qualidade da igualdade de género. Concluímos que, apesar das grandes transformações sociais das últimas décadas, a persistência de uma ideologia de género tradicional impõe limites à modernização da sociedade portuguesa.

Gender roles and dynamics in COVID-19 times: Changes and continuities in sharing arrangements of housework and caregiving

“…In fact, despite being a very small, homogeneous sample, with low representation of men, thus not allowing for much extrapolation, we verified the same trends as in past research (Amâncio & Correia, 2019;Perista, 2016;Wall et al, 2017): women spent more hours on caregiving than men, and men perceived their partners weekly hours on caregiving to be higher than women perceive for their partners. We found, therefore, an awareness of asymmetry by both men and women.…”

“…Our main concern was to address how the current COVID-19 pandemic could affect the decreasing trend of gender inequalities in unpaid work (EIGE, 2019b), which was slowly being achieved, at least for highly educated and younger couples (Amâncio & Correia, 2019). For couples in childbearing years, the effects on paid work and the overload of caregiving resulting from school closures could affect men and women very differently and jeopardize the progress made at this level, but also provide opportunities to renegotiate gender roles at home (Alon et al, 2020;OECD, 2020).…”

“…Regarding both housework and caregiving tasks, female participants perceived that they did more than would be fair during the pandemic compared to men, seeming to be aware of the gender asymmetries in terms of domestic work, but men were also aware of this asymmetry (Amâncio, 2007;Amâncio & Correia, 2019;Perista et al, 2016).…”

“…Considering our goals, and to have recent pre-pandemic data as a baseline for comparisons, the questionnaire comprised the following measures intended to replicate the previous research in the Portuguese context (Amâncio & Correia, 2019;Amâncio, 2007;Wall et al, 2007):…”

“…We expected that the overload of caregiving tasks resulting from schools' shutdown and the increase of housework would affect both men and women, but it is unclear if gender inequality would increase. With this goal in mind, and based on previous work by Amâncio and Correia (2019), we intended to access the relationship between the number of hours spent on housework and caregiving tasks and participant's sex, the perceived justice about the sharing arrangements, and how the lockdown increased men and women's weekly workload of unpaid work. These variables were expected to be impacted by age and educational level but, mostly, by parental status.…”