Entre o trabalho doméstico e o trabalho virtual : as donas de casa que transformaram sua rotina doméstica em conteúdo digital para o YouTube Brasil (2020 - 2024 )

Abstract

In the current context of flexible work and the expansion of virtual work, many women have transformed their domestic routine into digital content for the video platform YouTube Brasil. YouTube enables channel monetization through a partnership program with the platform's advertisers, enabling revenue generation for content creators. And this is how the number of housewives who have been creating their channels has grown increasingly, in search of visibility and remuneration for their domestic work through the digital platform. The present study aims to investigate the work relationships that are constituted by the overlap between the domestic activities of these housewives and the production of videos for YouTube, seeking to identify the boundaries between paid work and unpaid work. It discusses how the work of these women is reappropriated by the capitalist market through the digital platform. We also seek to identify how markers of gender, race and social class act, shaping possibilities in the trajectory of these women. Furthermore, evaluate whether the exposure (on YouTube) of the routine of these housewives contributes to the valorization of domestic work and/or to the maintenance of gender roles. The study was carried out by observing the selected channels. The research method of analysis is historical materialism and, more specifically, part of the studies of the theory of social reproduction, from a perspective of “women's history” connected with the working class. To understand how the intersections between the categories of exploitation and oppression operate in women's lives, I use the concept of intersectionality. And to expand the research on the work of housewives connected to new forms of digital work, I turn to the analyzes by Ricardo Antunes and Lucas Hertzog, on work on digital platforms, especially YouTube. From the observation of the work dynamics shown in the videos, it was concluded that the overlap between the domestic activities of housewives and the production of content for the digital platform YouTube Brasil has been amplifying the work of these women, since, with these activities being carried out simultaneously, the boundaries between domestic work and digital work are blurred, just as working time and life time merge in the dynamics between the real and the virtual. However, this opportunity presented to these workers, to be remunerated through an activity previously excluded from economic valuation, in the context of unpaid domestic work, constitutes a possibility of realizing the financial autonomy of these subjects.