In her weekly column for Crusoé, Letícia Barros provides an analysis of the ENEM exam and its essay topic. According to her, “the exam was blatantly biased and ideological, exposing the harsh reality of education in Brazil.”
Last Sunday, the first phase of the National High School Exam (ENEM) was administered, covering language, humanities, and essay writing. In this first year of the Lula 3 government, the exam was blatantly biased and ideological, exposing the harsh reality of education in Brazil. The essay topic was “Challenges in addressing the invisibility of care work performed by women in Brazil,” an important subject that clearly indicates the type of solution the examiners expect from students: inefficient state laws to protect women.
In this context, care work refers to all the assistance and support traditionally provided by women to others, whether children, parents, people with disabilities, and so on—with a focus also on domestic work, which inherently involves caring for the home. From the topic, it is understood that this work is invisible, which constitutes a problem requiring a solution. At this point, what I suggest in this text is a reflection on the aspects of this care work and how we can address the potential problems that may arise from it.
The implicit proposal of the topic is that women have a double work shift: the paid work from which they earn their income, and the care work at home and with the family. As a result, women are exhausted, have no time for themselves, and are always prioritizing the care of others over their self-care. It doesn’t take much to identify that this is the reality for many women: just join a conversation with friends, mothers, at church, or at work. There will always be a woman starting a heartfelt discussion about her exhaustion in trying to “juggle everything.”