Novas ou velhas expressões da questão social? uma reflexão acerca dos impactos da pandemia de COVID-19 na vida de mulheres mães solo do bairro João XXIII, do município de Caicó/RN

Abstract

In contemporary times, it is possible to point to the Covid-19 pandemic as a multidimensional phenomenon with impacts that go beyond the scope of biomedical and epidemiological issues by enhancing the existence of problems in various other aspects of human life, such as social, political, economic and health issues. In this sense, it was asked, from the consultations of Social Service performed in a Basic Health Unit (BHU) located in the neighborhood João XXIII in the city of Caicó/RN: How can the social issue be evaluated in the face of the pandemic context and what are its impacts on the daily lives of families headed by women living in this territory? Thus, this study aims to build a critical analysis about the worsening of the social issue in the pandemic context from the experiences of women heads of household in the neighborhood João XXIII. This is a field research of qualitative and descriptive approach. The data collection took place through the application of a sociodemographic questionnaire and a semi-structured interview to 18 female heads of households living in the aforementioned territory. The analysis of the data collected was done by means of Discourse Analysis and Historical-Dialectical Materialism. Through the analysis of the reports collected and the observations made of the territory under study, it was found that there are multiple expressions of the social issue in the daily life of the families of the interviewees. By comparing these findings with the literature, it was possible to verify that such manifestations of this problem, such as hunger, unemployment, gender inequality, and low education, for example, exist in an interconnected way, that is, exposure to one form is a consequence of the others: lack of access to education leads to a greater likelihood of insertion into underemployment or unemployment, which triggers restrictions on access to food and other essential goods, which can increase the situation of social vulnerability and expose people to various problems, such as mental illness, violence, and violations of rights, among others. In short, it can be concluded that the multiple ways in which the social issue manifests itself are not new problems, because its genesis remains innate in the complex and contradictory relationship Capital x Labor, however, from transformations in the social environment caused by phenomena such as the Covid-19 pandemic, they can worsen or gain new configurations, requiring constant investigative and reflective processes that can understand its nuances and propose strategies for its confrontation.