Trabalho doméstico: reflexões a partir de Polanyi e Arendt

Abstract

The exclusion of rural women from land inheritance and the significance attributed to marriage are based on the notion of “labor”. Despite the Marxists criticism to market economy, they created the expressions “productive” and “unproductive” work based on its principals. This dichotomy reinforced the depreciation of domestic work that already existed in antiquity, which viewed it as an unproductive and hierarchically inferior type compared to productive work. Polanyi and Arendt’s criticism has not significantly altered this classification by modern Marxism, thus the notion of women’s work on the field as nothing but an “aid” to men’s work.  Since land inheritance is a way of rewarding the maintenance of the family patrimony, it is through marriage that most rural women become agriculturists. With the emergence of feminist rural movements, the submission implied in the husband/wife relationship is now being questioned.