Divisão etária e sexual do trabalho: o sexo e a idade na dinâmica do capital flexível numa unidade de calçado de Ipirá-BA. / Age and sexual divisionof labor: sex and age on the dynamics of capital in a flexible unit production of shoes Ipirá - BA.

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2008

RESUMO

This study aims to understand how sex and age, the most ancient criteria of social division of work, has been used by capital in its flexible accumulation phase. Our analysis of the sexual and by age division of work has as its empirical universe a shoe production factory, the headquarters of which is in Rio Grande do Sul, and the factory, which opened in 2003, is situated in the Ipirá municipality, in Bahia. The quantitative and qualitative data we produced showed a young, predominantly single, equally distributed between sexes labour force with incomplete or complete second degree schooling. This profile expresses the internal flexibility that allows the flexible enterprise to perform cost reduction with innovations in the use of the labour force. Wages are reduced, mens and womens salaries are lowered and leveled independent of functions performed in the production or time of employment in the enterprise, making working time the most mobile possible, fragmenting vacations and enforcing a work-hours bank. Furthermore, the use of a multifunctional labour force makes it easily substitutable. This profile is also an expression of the rigid sexual division of productive activities: women are involved with sewing, preparing, finishing and in revision, abilities considered to be feminine, while men are responsible for the heavy and dangerous work on shoe soles, such as cutting and assembling, with or without machines. The older workers, perceived as inheritors of the fordist culture, are excluded from the process of selection of the enterprise, whose preference is for younger workers in order to prepare them for a new flexible and multifunctional work culture. Nevertheless, this new culture utilizes old social practices of gender, such as distinguishing activities by sexes. Thus, the employability of young people, both female and male, occurs with the intent of exploitation, through the intensification of the work pace and of the updating of social relations of domination.

ASSUNTO(S)

divisão etária do trabalho ciencias sociais aplicadas shoe industry division of work by age indústria de calçado sexual division of work divisão sexual do trabalho

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