Gender, Family and Social Protection: the Inequalities Sustained by Social Policies

Abstract

This article analyzes the factors that establish social inequalities in the structuring and development of current Brazilian society. It highlights the processes that are involved in the existing relations between genders, the social protection system, and labor market conditions in relation to the productive insertion of women. To conduct this reflection, it focuses on an analysis of the family as a space of differentiation and hierarchization of gender, and as a locus of a substantial portion of unpaid domestic work among women, along with the general consequences of this space of social reproduction. Based on an analysis of data from Brazil and Latin America, it demonstrates the persistent ties of women to precarious labor, offered in a broad informal sector, alongside their growing participation in the labor market in an effort to reconcile responsibility for social protection with the need to increase family income.