Objective
to analyze the impacts of night shift work on the health of metal-mechanical women workers.
Methods
from the perspective of gender relations, this study focuses on how the organization and social division of labor affect the everyday lives of these women. It examines experiences in light of these reflections on vulnerabilities, produced in the gender/work/health relationship. It is a qualitative study, held in 2012, using semi-structured interviews with nine night shift workers of a company located in the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul state. Data analysis was based in the method of discourse analysis. Analytical lines were built on the dialogue between the literature and the interviewees’ discourses.
Discussion
we identified gender inequalities that may impact on night shift metal-mechanic workers’ health, pointing at some particularities of these workers’ daily lives in the researched sector, such as: acute process of work underestimation, limited rest hours, irregular eating, difficulties to organize their lives off work, lack of access to the social structures that can back their female activities, and over charge of assumed responsabilities that can cause mental suffering and/or other illnesses.
gender; health; work; shift work; night work