O papel do gênero no conhecimento das plantas medicinais e na resiliência de sistemas médicos locais

Abstract

The gender is one of the most studied variables that influence on the intra and intercultural knowledge variation in local medical systems. Its relationship with the structural and functional components of these systems poses as an important variable to be analysed, considering its role and influence on the resilience of the local medical systems. However, etnobiologic studies that were designed to understand how medical systems are maintained, have not described the gender associated with factors that are important in the resilience of systems, such as, utilitarian redundancy and the transmission of knowledge, through a structural and functional perspective. This study has three specific objectives to analyze the gender variable: 1) examine whether there is a pattern in the knowledge of medicinal plants between men and women on different scales; 2) analyze how gender contributes to the resilience of the local medical systems; and 3) analyze whether the dynamics of the social role of each genus in the family nucleus has influence on the variation of knowledge of medicinal plants between gender. For the first objective, we have carried out a systematic review and meta-analyses in different scales (country, continent, global), whereas 61 Ethnobotanical studies which analysed the difference in the knowledge gap between men and women in different communities in the world. In the second and third objective, we performed semi-structured interviews, in the indigenous community Fulni-ô, in their knowledge of the local medical system, evaluating information like, the knowledge of medicinal plants between men and women, the utility redundancy of the therapeutic targets, the sharing, the models of diffusion of knowledge about medicinal plants between genders, the social role, sources of obtaining the resource, diversity of models in which to apply the treatment and the preference of using medicinal plants between genders. The results of the first goal show that there is a variation of knowledge in different scales and it is not unidirectional, men and women may have a greater knowledge of medicinal plants or almost do not have differences. The analyses performed for the resilience of the system show that the men of the Fulni-ô indigenous community contribute more in local medical system resilience however, women contribute more in functionality. The results of the analysis of the social role showed that the dynamics of this, related to each gender within the family nucleus, influences the variation in knowledge of medicinal plants between genders. This study concludes that gender plays an important role in local medical system resilience, to influence the structure, function and system functionality, however this role varies for each gender because of the dynamics of the social role of each gender in society, pointing out that this variation is different between the global and continental scales of the country. Based on the conclusions, future studies have to be performed with a multifactorial perspective, not unidirectional one, considering the dynamics of this social-ecological system.