Trabalho doméstico no Brasil: os impactos das políticas públicas num contexto de crise(s)

Abstract

The present study aims to understand the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis on domestic workers in Brazil, verifying how the neoliberal tendency of austerity preserves the conditions of precariousness and invisibility of this class in the post-pandemic context. Domestic workers represent just over 6 million people in Brazil. Of this total, 5.7 million are women and 3.9 million declared themselves to be black women (PINHEIRO, 2019). Slavery and paid domestic employment in Brazil are strongly associated, so that the historical element of racial domination from the slave era shapes the relations of paid domestic work to the present. The vulnerability that workers in this category experience is revealed in the lack of social protection, even after the profession is regulated in the country. That said, the starting point for understanding the condition of invisibility of reproductive work, whether paid or not, is through the study of the contradictions of gender, race and class, conferred on the sexual division and racial division of labor. Domestic work was the second activity most impacted by the pandemic, as shown by the PNAD Contínua of January 2021. In total, 1.5 million jobs were lost in the last mobile quarter analyzed. In order not to lose their jobs, many workers agreed to carry out social isolation at their employers' homes. The pandemic, therefore, made visible the main tensions of social reproduction, calling into question the essentiality of domestic work for the reproduction of life and how it is systematically kept undervalued. There is no neutrality in the State's public policy decisions, as it actively participates in determining the social condition and in the maintenance of social inequalities. Defending the overcoming of the 2014 economic crisis, Brazil has been adopting orthodox fiscal adjustment policies, mainly related to cutting social spending. As of 2016, neoliberal reforms were submitted for approval, including the Teto de Gastos Law and the Labor Reform, both in force since 2017, and the Social Security reform, approved at the end of 2019. Policies that establish privileges for dominant social groups to the detriment of the most vulnerable ones reflect racism rooted in socioeconomic structures by promoting more inequality. Thus, it is essential to understand which portion of the population gains from austerity policies and who gains from an active fiscal policy in maintaining population's basic living conditions, such as ‘Auxílio Emergencial’ Aid.