Tensions between the productive body of women and gender norms around motherhood

Abstract

In this study we seek to understand the tensions which emerge from a gender norms that promotes and naturalizes motherhood in women over 20 and 40 years, and increasingly common social constraints that underpin and value the possession of a productive body that contributes to a capitalist, competitive and market economic system. We work under a qualitative model. We conducted this approach from an interpretive paradigm and a hermeneutic epistemology gender perspective. This allowed us to approach critically to the tensions, contradictions and transformations taking place in the life course of women to face motherhood in Guadalajara, Mexico. Among the findings highlighted the persistence of intensive maternity wards coupled with the execution of professional and industrial projects involving women discomfort, guilt and physical exhaustion, all enrolled in gender mandates own a male hegemony. Also identify situations of delayed childbearing associated with the preponderance of achieving goals labor, professional and economic.