Occupational therapies: gender influence in their work performance

This research is based on a gender perspective and approach. Its objective was to analyze the gender’s influence on the performance of Occupational Therapists’s work in the city of Temuco, based on the perceptions and experiences of these professionals. The methodology used corresponds to the qualitative approach, using the phenomenology as theoretical support. The sample of the study was intentional and was constituted by 10 professionals, being the number of men and women equal in quantity. The semi - structured interview was used as an instrument of data collection by analyzing the information obtained through content analysis and discourse analysis. The topics covered consider the relationship between work and gender and refer to: wage differences, labor costs, power management and minority status. The results obtained indicate that there is gender influence in the occupational therapists’ workperformance in all the determinants analyzed, mainly in labor costs and minority status. With regard to the impact on performance, there are divided opinions, since 80 percent of the female sample considers that there is gender influence in the labor performance, compared to the male 60 percent that does not visualize influences in their work determined by the gender variable. However, it is necessary to emphasize that the above is not determined by the discipline, but by the cultural constructions of the society, reason why we must be more critical with the phenomena derived from gender, considering that it is a category of analysis inherent to the human being.