Social relations of sex/gender, work and health: contribution of Helena Hirata

Abstract

The article aims to reflect on the intellectual production of researcher Helena Hirata, as an important reference for the field of collective health, especially for understanding the relationships between work and the dynamics that involve health. Her theoretical-academic publications and interviews with specialized journals were used, whose analysis was deepened through a virtual conversation with the researcher.
With her comparative research in Brazil, France, and Japan, Hirata presents the diversities and similarities of the worlds of work, the processes of globalization and their effects, strengthening the discussion about the expansion of the concept of work beyond wage labor and its centrality. Her studies enrich the debate on the inseparability between the social relations of sex/gender and the sexual division of labor. The imbrication and interdependence of the set of social relations will appear in an exemplary way in her analysis of care work, enabling the condensation of ideas and concepts. In this way, Hiratas intellectual production, when affirming the transversality of the social relations of sex / gender, subsidizes reflections on the determination of the health-disease process, contributing decisively to the studies of the health-work relationship.