Resumen

DIOGO, Maria Fernanda  y  MAHEIRIE, Kátia. De balde e vassoura na mão: os sentidos que mulheres serventes de limpeza atribuem aos seus trabalhos. Rev. Mal-Estar Subj. [online]. 2007, vol.7, n.2, pp.557-579. ISSN 1518-6148.

This paper has tried to understand the meaning of labor for women who work with cleaning and conservation for service providers in the great Florianopolis area. This is based in the historic-dialectic perspective, understanding the subject as social, historical, constituted and constituency in a context in which one is inserted. A field research was done in qualitative methodology, in a case-study format. The interviews tried to find the movement of these women in the choice processes of cleaning and conservation profession, the feelings attributed to this job as well as which projects they have produced. The method of analysis was progressive-regressive, based on Sartre's theoretic, trying to highlight the objectivity of subjectivity. The analysis has shown that this job is important and central to these women's lives, but some characteristics of the established relation turn it into a source of dissatisfaction and psychic suffering. The meanings attributed to the work with cleaning and conservation are multiple and often presented in an ambivalent way, but depreciative and devalued aspects are highlighted, described many times as tiring, badly paid, and socially unrecognized. This profession was felt as of little attraction and the job change happens as soon as another work segment possibility appears. Besides the paid work, the interviewed women also accomplish services of cleaning and conservation in the domestic extent, causing overload and fatigue. The house work was felt as a "fatality" - a consequence of "being a woman", repetitive, tiring, unending and above all "heroic" - valuing the dignity of the submission and of the self-denial of the woman. This speech reproduces the men's and women's social places in a net of senses that permeates the family and the society.

Palabras clave : constitution of the subject; work; gender; meaning of labor; psychic suffering.

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