Women, leadership and care: perspectives from the Psychodynamics of Female Work
leadership, care, psychodynamics of work, female work
This research project has the main goal to investigate the psychodynamics of women's
work in leadership contexts. Specifically, we intend to characterize the leadership work
performed by women; understand and analyze the relationship between the work of
leading and the care work; and to propose a resignification of what characterizes
leadership from the perspective of the Psychodynamics of Female Work and the
theories of care work. The project includes theoretical research on the proposed theme
and the proposal of qualitative field research with women in leadership contexts. In the
first section of the project, we present a literature review about female leadership. In the
second section, we analyze the work of leading from the perspective of the
Psychodynamics of Female Work. In the third section, we analyze the work of leading
performed by women from the perspective of the theories of care work. In the fourth
section, we propose interviews with women in leadership contexts to understand the
psychodynamics of the real work of these women. For this, we will use a semi-
structured script. In the fifth section, we present the schedule of activities. We expect
with this research to contribute to the understanding of what characterizes the leadership
performed by women, to give a new meaning to the theme and to give visibility to the
care work.