A inserção das mulheres na luta pela terra: movimento de participação e/ou submissão

Abstract

The following dissertation studies the insertion of peasant women in the conflict for land since the occupation process, dispossession and construction of the settlement New Horizon II, in the municipal district of Maxaranguape. It analyses their participation in the conflict Valley of the Hope", that resulted in the settlements New Life II and New Horizon II in the municipal district of Maxaranguape. The analysis exposes the reasons which took the peasant women, after the land conquest, to go back into domestic space and/or to assume positions of lesser relevance in the political organizations of the settlement. In the conflict Valley of the Hope, the women had a fundamental role, facing the police violence, being front line of the conflicts against the repression forces, risking their lives and the life of their families. After the conquest of the land, transformed into the New Horizon II Settlement, there are a lot of changes in the participation of the women. We can observe that, despite the protagonism of the families, in special of the women in the Valley of the Hope conflict, these female workers still experiment unequal social, economic, political and cultural conditions in relation to the men, expressing the gender inequalities which are found in the daily life of the settlement: in the community, in the domestic and agricultural task. The conflict for the land in the Valley of the Hope and the conquest of the settlement did not necessarily mean the incorporation of the emancipation of the peasant women. However, the political participation in the development of the conflicts allowed to the women the self discovering and the beginning of an emancipation process as gender. There are signals of continuities and ruptures of the present culture, almost always stimulated by the organization of the agricultural female workers