Gender and work. The economic support of household in Mexico

Abstract

Throughout history, the hegemonic norms of gender have been continually constructed and reconstructed according to a heterosexual matrix, which is crystallized in the sexual division of labor. Within this framework, this paper aims to describe the way Mexican women and men construct their trajectories of household economic support throughout their life course. We base our analysis on the type of employment and the periods in which women and men become the main economic supporters of the household. Thus we use an optimal matching analysis to investigate what kind of trajectories are followed, how they vary between generations, and whether or not there are differences by social sectors and regions of the country.