This paper is an extension of a research entitled “Perceptions and feelings of curators about the exercise of curatorship,” which sought to understand the experiences, perceptions and feelings of curators who were also the primary caregivers of the respective interdicted persons. A curator is someone designated to manage the financial and property matters of an adult individual (the interdicted), who is considered partially incapacitated due to being a person with a mental or intellectual disability, addicted to substances, or unable to express their will due to a prolonged condition. Of the six curators interviewed in the context of the curatorship oversight carried out by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the State of Amazonas, in the city of Manaus, five were women. In their accounts, they reproduced gender norms related to the role of women as natural caregivers, but these could not be analyzed in depth within the scope of this first research. In this regard, the objectives of the present work were to investigate, in the interviews with the women who are both curators and caregivers, the impact of the social construction of caregiving as a feminine role, and to show how this occurs, in light of socio-historical theory, gender studies, and the socio-cultural context of the Amazon. Bardin’s content analysis and the aforementioned theoretical framework were used to investigate the accounts collected through semi-structured interviews during the previous study. This investigation showed that the impact of the social construction of caregiving as a feminine role exists, and is evident, for example, in how women perceive their role as caregivers as a divine calling, a result of the influence of Christianity in the Amazon region, or in how they do not see caregiving work as a job in itself, due to the conveniently passed idea, within the capitalist system, that women are naturally responsible for caregiving tasks. It was concluded that, as the constitution of subjectivity is a process mediated by both the social and the individual, very old beliefs about the roles that should be occupied by women, and only by them, still persist in the subjectivities of Amazonian women. Even so, a study with an interview guide focused on this theme would allow for an even deeper and more productive exploration of the subject.
|
