WOMEN AND THEIR FAMILY DEMANDS: tRANSLATION OF THE OVERLOAD AND THE SOCIAL INVISIBILITY OF CARE

Abstract

The present article analyzes how care demands attributed to women translate into overload, devaluation, exploitation, and inequalities within a context marked by the social invisibility of care, adopting a theoretical-analytical approach grounded in Social Reproduction Theory and in feminist studies on gender and work in order to understand how care, as a constitutive dimension of the reproduction of life and the maintenance of human survival, remains historically invisibilized and devalued; it also discusses the relationship between care and the sexual division of labor, showing how this social organization naturalizes women’s responsibility for reproductive activities; it concludes that recognizing care as work constitutes a fundamental element for the planning, development, and strengthening of public policies aimed at reducing inequalities, as well as for legitimizing women’s place in social spaces historically marked by processes of exclusion and discrimination within the working class.