Women, local development and the right to the city

Abstract

The women of the favelas increasingly assume the place of protagonists in the struggle for social rights, transferring fixed and consensual values from the heterocisnormative and sexist historical structure to a true social revolution that combines gender and city. This study addresses the meanings and meanings of poverty, from the experience in the daily occupations of women living in favelas in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. To do this, oral narratives were used to understand their trajectories and extract categories that serve to reflect on the meanings of poverty that prevail in actions related to local development and the right to the city. It is an exploratory research, with a qualitative approach, that used the technique of "indication networks" to carry out the interviews, based on a semi-structured script. Four women, residents of the Complexo do Alemão, Rio de Janeiro, participated in the study. The meanings of poverty produced through the narratives of these women denounce the absence of social rights and local public policies, as well as the need to prioritize a positive value of the place as a space for struggle, resistance and social participation. In this study it was important to understand how these women produce such meanings and meanings, examining the historical and cultural context of the emergence and expansion of the favelas, discussing the effects of social stigma as a barrier to the recognition of these territories as centers of creative production, of cultural and subjective expression.