The dynamics of inequality and intersectionalities of the working women of urban household waste: the case of street sweepers

Abstract

This text is part of the results of the sociological research on the professional category “women street sweepers” of the Brazilian Federal District (DF, Brazil). The paper analyzes a job considered vile and devalued in the socio-economic perspective, from an intersectional approach. The conditions of deep inequalities have direct consequences for the workers themselves and the world of work structures. The historical features of the Brazilian nation-state, the ethnic-racial formation of its people and the modeling of society in modern parameters brought particular features to these socio-professional categories, some of which are mostly made of dark skin people with low education, respond to internal migration in the country, have unique distinctions between men and women, do not wave with social mobility, have reduced labor rights and, finally, are socially invisibilized. At the same time, they are absent from economic statistics, subsumed development policies and are little studied by the academy.