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Making (unequal) families : gender, class and family practices in Santiago de Chile
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Nuñez Salazar, Isabel Margarita (2021) Making (unequal) families : gender, class and family practices in Santiago de Chile. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3761301
Abstract
This thesis examines how far the heteronormative family in Chile is being challenged and the possibilities for building more egalitarian families. It uses a combination of qualitative methodologies: in-depth interviews and observation in participants’ homes and analysis of family photography. Taking a feminist approach to investigating gender relations in families, the thesis is the first in Latin America to adopt Morgan’s (1996) framework of ‘family practices’ and Finch’s (2007) concept of ‘displaying family’. The 25 middle-class and 20 working-class participants live in six types of families: married, cohabiting, stepfamilies, same-sex partnerships, lone parents and people living alone.
The empirical investigation covers three kinds of family practices. First, practices that are important in constituting participants’ understanding of family: taking responsibility, offering support and coming together to celebrate the people and animals who participants count as family. Second, gendered divisions of labour and the allocation of resources: men’s better employment opportunities give them greater access to money and leisure time than women while the home is women’s domain, although some men said they valued their role as a padre presente. Third, family photography is a practice that preserves other family practices and represents what participants value in their family life.
Heterosexual middle-class and working-class families hold similar understandings of family and gender divisions of labour, although middle-class women benefit from employing empleadas and middle-class men contribute more to childcare. Middleclass families ‘display family’, along with their class status, with expensive holidays and restaurant meals. Working-class families value opportunities to ‘do family’, but have fewer opportunities to display family in public and are concerned to maintain respectability.
Overall, the thesis finds that ‘doing family’ usually depends on doing gender, so there is little opportunity to challenge heteronormative expectations. However, gay and lesbian families and a few heterosexual families are creating new family practices which challenge heteronormative gender divisions, with lesbian participants in particular exploring new ways of making family.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman | ||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Families -- Chile, Marriage -- Chile, Gay-parent families -- Chile, Sexual division of labor -- Chile, Middle class families -- Chile, Working class families -- Chile, Home labor -- Chile, Sex role | ||||
Official Date: | March 2021 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of Sociology | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Wolkowitz, Carol ; Charles, Nickie | ||||
Sponsors: | University of Warwick. Department of Sociology ; Becas Chile Scholarship | ||||
Format of File: | |||||
Extent: | 434 leaves : illustrations | ||||
Language: | eng |
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