Gender and work: discursive elaborations on professional roles

Abstract

In the last few years, society has been functioning increasingly due to different patterns elaborated on the characterization of social roles, expressed through different sets of ideas. In the present study, we focused in occupations. Analyzing the institution of occupations in male and female forms, we aimed at understanding socially elaborated reasons to justify differences between the types of activities conceived as more fit to men or women. In order to do this, was analyzed representations and ideologies elaborated by some professionals who have activities seen as socially appropriated or not to their gender, since discourses are forms of expressing shared ideologies in a given context. Through semi-structured interviews, we researched male and female professionals in pedagogy and engineering. Using ALCESTE and associating this first result to a semantic analysis, it was observed that the repertories produced by professionals have embodied the idea of leadership as the most prominent element when organizing activities accordingly to gender. The results reveal representations on the social roles of each gender in working.