Processo de significação do trabalho para diaristas atuantes na cidade de Natal, Rio Grande do Norte

Abstract

Regardless of legal acknowledgement, there are female housekeepers who work on a daily hiring system that allows them to work on a maximum of two days a week for the same employer. Their occupation is marked by the perpetuation of a gender and social status stratified system, which yields the reinforcement of inequalities, and brings another dimension to the matter: age. The number of people with this sort of employment has been increasing, mainly in the great metropolitan areas. Recently, this kind of labor has been studied by Work Psychology, notedly by the Social Psychology of Work. Contemplating this data, this research seeks to understand the process of signification of work for the daily hired housekeepers, in the city of Natal, Rio Grande do Norte. Basing essentially on the activity theory, this dissertation comprehends significances as constructions mediated by concrete activity. Therefore, 12 daily hired housekeepers were interviewed, and their answers analyzed according to the construction of Meaning Cores. In this study, we inferred and systematized the construction of six meaning cores that have as a focus: a) occupational trajectory of the housekeepers; b) tools, obstacles and strategies for facing the execution of the work activity; c) social relations in the working process; d) the perception of the housekeeping work activity; e) repercussions of the changes in the work area regarding daily hired housekeepers; and f) the conclusion about the final work. Within the human activity of housekeeping there is the prescription of objects, rules and procedures related to the desired results and how to reach them, however, it is a dynamic system, which can lead to similarities and contradictions in the activity itself. We were able to verify the results through a large amount of literature, mainly when it came to matters that unveil the precariousness of work, since this occupation still carries a lot of the structures of the unequal social scheme in Brazil. Aside from the contributions in this research, we brought up various themes that can be further studied.