Under the risk of stress: consequences of the women emancipation in the Brazilian Veja magazine (2000 - 2018)

• Main Authors: João Batista de Macedo Freire Filho, Bruna Werneck de Andrade Bakker
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Instituto de Comunicação e Informação Científica e Tecnológica em Saúde (Icict) da Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz) 2019-09-01
• Series: RECIIS
• Subjects: Estresse; Risco; Mulheres; Discurso; Mídia.
• Online Access: https://www.reciis.icict.fiocruz.br/index.php/reciis/article/view/1790

Considered as a ‘global epidemic’ by the World Health Organization (WHO), stress figures as one of the major contemporary disorders. In this article, we examine the discursive constructions on female stress, that is, when the term is specifically related to women. In order to do so, we conduct a discursive analysis of the brazilian Veja magazine from 2000 to 2018. Our intention is to observe the ways in which the magazine reviews the consequences of the so-called ‘feminine emancipation’ in terms of stress from two main sources: (1) the relationship between stress, hormones and PMS; (2) stress as a consequence of the ‘triple working time’ (the accumulation of the roles played by women: worker, wife and mother). We conclude that such discourses on female stress collaborate to confirm that certain sources of tension, as well as how to deal with them, are regard as been morally and physiologically concerned to women.