Gênero e desenvolvimento: trajetórias de quatro gerações de mulheres do sertão da Paraíba

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on rural development in a gender perspective, examining changes in Cariri, a semiarid area in the sertão of Paraiba state, considering changes that took place in life trajectory of four generation of women, of a peasant family.. In our study, conducted from 2009 to 2011, we discuss how rural women and their families in the last nine decades, benefited by public policies implemented in Cariri were affected by access to these policies in the spheres of education, health, access to land, water, services of technical assistance and rural extension. The chosen methodology is based on the concepts of Ecléa Bosi (2009), Barros (200 -) and Gaulejac (2006) concerning to history and trajectory of life. The qualitative method allowed us to research the experiences of rural women in three delimited periods of their lives: the "time at the sítio," the "time at the allotment" and "present time". Our theoretical framework highlights the categories: rural development, feminism and gender, rural extension, public policy and life trajectories. To reflect on the rural world and the peasantry, introduce the concepts of Nazareth Wanderley (2009), Veiga (2002), Sabourin (2009) and Abramovay (2003); in development category, besides the mentioned authors, we stress mantega (1984), Amartya Sen (2007), Araujo (2000) and Furtado (2009). The reflection on rural extension is anchored in Callou (2006), and in public policy marks we refer to Burstyn (2008) and Mendonça (2010). We bring the debate about feminism and gender through conception of Avila (2007) and Siliprandi (2009). To analyze the specificities of gender in rural context, we work primarily with Paulilo Agnes (2004), Melo and Di Sabato (2009). Making the link between feminism and development, we rely on the questions of Nancy Fraser (2009). In our theoretical approach we discuss the concept of development adopted in Brazil since the 1930s, which established industrialization and urbanization as the significance of modernization. We also reflect on the effects of this choice to rural space and its people, treading a path of the development policies until the present, when the demands go to the agenda of a sustainable development and the questionings on the state's role, especially with recent process of democratization experienced in the country. Feminist and gender studies are fundamental to understanding the power relations established in society, which are products and producers of inequities by belongings of gender, race and class. We observed in this study that, in the rural world, women play the role of "agent" in everyday life of production and reproduction. However, the political history of Brazil's development, giving priority to urban-industrial model, did not consider the inclusion of the needs and singularities of the rural population. Indeed, were produced abysmal inequalities between rural and urban world, women and men, whites, blacks and Indians.