Female Housework, The Right To Health And A Pandemic: X-Ray Of The Vulnerability Of A Professional Category

Abstract

Domestic work occupies a specific position in the capitalist system, especially in developing countries such as Brazil. Performed mostly by poor and black women, this work represents the third most important occupational segment of women's work in the country and illustrates various aspects of the formation of the working class and the socioeconomic reality, complexities and perpetuation of prejudices. In spite of the corresponding legal apparatus, the practice reveals the maintenance of vulnerabilities, evidenced in the moment experienced due to the Sars-CoV virus, in the realization of the right to health of domestic workers. In light of this, we propose to analyze the impacts of the norms regulating social isolation in the context of domestic workers, based on a dialogue between the right to health and social vulnerability. This is a bibliographic and documental research, carried out in the theoretical and empirical field, with a qualitative approach. We find that the maintenance of social vulnerability has hindered the realization of the right to health of the category in times of pandemic, and that it is necessary to (re)think the format of the relations established and perpetuated in domestic work, from the formulation of public policies aimed at the quality and safety of this professional category, as a measure of justice and the realization of human dignity of domestic workers in Brazil.