Implications of the economic crisis and expansion situations on families and the family-work relationship

Abstract

The objective of this article is to discuss how the relationship between family and work evolved during the period of economic crisis and the growth period that followed, particularly in the country’s metropolitan areas. The article considers that aspects of the crisis have favored changes in the relationship between family and labor, which are defined by gender relations. One important question is whether such changes can be generally expected to bring about changes in the sexual division of labor. The concept of sexual division of labor is central to this article as related to both family and market, as it defines the places of men and women in the spheres of production and reproduction. Periods of slow economic growth (the 1980s and 1990s), especially the crisis in the 1990s, which involved the restructuring of production, brought about an acceleration in changes in the presence of members of families in the labor market. Since that period, rearrangements of families with regard to presence in the labor market have become more clearly defined, with greater participation of married women in production and less presence of children. This meant a fracture in the figure of “main provider” and the emergence of families with two providers, a tendency, which consolidated in the period of expansion of the economy that began in 2004.