This paper discusses the new gender division of labour which results from the restructuring process in the metal industry emphasizing its impacts on the work and health conditions of women workers. The qualitative research conducted in plants of different sizes in the ABC and Campinas (both in the State of São Paulo) focused on the new forms of female work as a result of the introduction of new management practices and new technologies. It also examines the perceptions of those women workers about the changes in their work and health conditions, with the purpose of understanding the relationship between the new forms of work process organization and the deepening of psychophysical suffering at work. We concluded that metal companies' restructuration has a clear gender bias as the places assigned to women in the new division of labor contribute to increase the deterioration of women work conditions. At the plants studied, female workers are more concentrated in low pay jobs, under bad work conditions without protection against the hazards derived from work activities. The paper shows that there is a clear relationship between the change in women's work conditions and the increasing of health problems and work diseases (such as RSI and stress among others).
women workers; gender division of labour; restructuring process; metal industry; health conditions
