Author(s): Silva, Estefânia ; Casimiro, Cláudia ; Vieira, Cristina Pereira ; Manuel Costa, Paulo ; Topa, Joana ; Neves, Sofia ; Borges, Janete ; Sousa, Mafalda
Date: 2023
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/30623
Origin: Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa
Subject(s): Immigrant Men and Women; Sharing Unpaid Work; Portugal.
In this article, we intend to understand and discuss how immigrant men and women living in Portugal perceive their contributions to the performance of unpaid work and how they try to deal with the situation of the greater burden on women. To this end, a qualitative methodology was used to conduct an exploratory study with 10 focus groups of immigrant men and women in five regions of the country: North, Centre, Lisbon, Alentejo and Algarve. The participants, 43 females and 27 males, were aged between 19 and 80 years. From the discourse of the immigrant participants in this study, it could be concluded that the division of unpaid work between immigrant women and men is not equal, as their statements evidenced a greater responsibility and overload on women. From a traditional vision of gender roles, a persistent dichotomy of two worlds could be perceived, based on a “naturalized” vision of the social roles of gender and on a distribution grounded in biological differences. In parallel, discourses show a change in the sharing of household chores and childcare. However, this does not always occur regularly and appears very much associated with the entry of women into the paid labour market.
