Social Representations and Female Unemployment: Shared Meanings in Process of Transformation?

Abstract

While some research copes with the problem of unemployment from a purely economic perspective, underlying thus the number of unemployed, other research focus more on the consequences of the unemployment for the individual. Coping this phenomenon through the theory of social representations results of particular interest in countries with a long industrial tradition, where unemployment is in the centre of public debate. Moreover, if the specific weight that women occupy inside the unemployed population is considered, approaching the opinions and discourses elaborated around the unemployment is more elucidating. Results show the singularity of female unemployment. Even though the new social practices derived from the incorporation of women to remunerated jobs, the transformation of social representation of unemployment is resistant to change. Results also show a conditional meaning system where two normative systems are interlinked: the system of equality and the system of the division of roles.

Keywords

• social representations
• female unemployment
• normative systems
• central nucleus of social representations