ABSTRACT
Work, which was once seen only as a mean of survival and accumulation of wealth, has become one of the major dimensions of human life, causing individuals to be identified through the activities they perform. Thus, work took on a new meaning for individuals, since personal fulfillment is closely related to its recognition in society. Several studies have addressed work through the senses that workers attach to the activities they carry out, as the case of the present research that investigates the sense produced by a particular category, distant from formal professions: prostitutes. To that end, the objective is to capture the subjective senses produced by women working as prostitutes in nightclubs in the countryside of Minas Gerais. For this, it was sought, in the first place, to contextualize prostitution as a profession, unravel the life trajectory of participants and their insertion in this activity, and raise the subjective senses related to work in prostitution. Six prostitutes, who work in nightclubs, participated in the survey. The data collection was performed through an interview focusing specifically on a milestone in the professional trajectory of these women. The qualitative study based on the Qualitative Epistemology (Rey, 2005Rey, G. F. L. (2005). O valor heurístico da subjetividade na investigação psicológica. In G. F. L. Rey (Org.). Subjetividade, complexidade e pesquisa em psicologia (pp. 27-51). São Paulo: Thomson Learning.) was adopted and analyses were based on the comprehension of subjective sense. The author argues that between the thought and the language, lies the emotion, and, therefore,subjective senses cannot be always captured in the subject’s direct expressions. Finally, subjective senses related to work in prostitution were comprehended, relating to violence, abortion, abandonment, mistrust, prejudice, discrimination, humiliation, fear, insecurity and loneliness. The analysis of subjective senses of prostitutes regarding their work proved timely for the understanding of important aspects of the relationship between the research participants and the senses they ascribe to their work and made it possible to evidence that relations in the work environment are permeated by countless others which occur in other social environments of the subjects’ activity.
Work; Subjective senses; Female prostitutes; Gender relations; Prostitution