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Article

Open Access

Conjugal Dissolution and Gender (In)equalities: A Study of Divorce Processes in Portugal

Author(s)

Manuel Carlos Silva, Ana Reis Jorge

Full-Text PDF Download XML 438 Views

DOI:10.17265/2159-5526/2018.06.002

Affiliation(s)

University of Minho, Portugal/National University of Brasilia, Brazil; University of Minho, Portugal

ABSTRACT

Like other democratic societies, Portugal has known an important reduction of gender inequalities, mainly by the action of women’s social movements and some political forces. However, recent (inter)national studies confirm the social borders and inequalities persistence in many contexts (work, values and symbolic regulations, institutional frames, and daily interactions). In this paper, the authors will focus their analysis on the conjugal dissolution processes and unequal distribution of power between men and women. Regarding these matters, there is an extended debate, where they propose an articulation between the concepts of gender and class. The authors assume as fruitful an articulation of the Marxist model with the feminist one and, indirectly, a critical and synthetic crossing between (neo)Marxism and Weberianism, being this one also articulated with symbolic interactionism. Based on official statistics, in the analysis of some interviews about the motivations for/in divorce, and in the empirical evidence from the divorce judicial processes, the authors present some preliminary results of a collective project held on some regions of Portugal named: “Gender inequalities in work and private life: from the norms to social practices”. The central hypothesis of this project is that the forms of gender inequality and domination are tributaries of macro-economic and institutional mechanisms but they are also playing at the micro level (family, business, public and private institutions), involving both variables, namely, in a crossing of Weberian-Marxist perspectives, the presence/absence of certain level of empowerment by social actors. That means that women’s position depends and/or differs in function of factors such as available resources and rewards, the place in the organizational and (re)productive sphere of the family, and the place in the interactions and in roles negotiation.

KEYWORDS

Divorce, gender, class, inequalities, domestic power

Cite this paper

Sociology Study, June 2018, Vol. 8, No. 6, 267-286

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