Os meus, os seus, os nossos planos: histórias de vida de casais de dual career

Abstract

There are several reasons that lead an individual to choose a career, and for a long time women didn’t have that choice because they were more dedicated to domestic tasks while men were developing their careers and acted as financial providers. Actually this context is not that common anymore, and taking that into account, dual career couples arised, who mantain a relationship while each individual has its own career. The main objective of this research is to analyze the alignment of dual career couples facing the opportunity of mobility for one of the individuals of the couple regarding career issues. The research used lifestory method, and the subjects interviewed were dual career couples. The interviews were individual, open and in depth, analyzed through speech analysis technique. It was stated that decisions taken by the couples were made through the establishment of criteria. Some couples are encouraged to make quick and short-term decisions, so that one of them has to abdicate of some things in order to follow the other one. A couple with a long-term planning may delay plans together, making sacrifices at the present time, seeking for improvements in the future. This research contributes for gender studies and adds a new problematic in the dual career studies, considered recent in Brazil.