PEASANT WOMEN IN CONTEMPORARY BRAZIL: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE AND SOCIAL PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

The work proposes to reflect on the presence of characteristic traits of the peasantry in contemporary agriculture. The course taken is based on the specificity of the Brazilian peasantry in relation to the classic debate held in Europe, examining the adoption of the category family farming as a diverse plural, hiding the permanences of the past in order to highlight the changes that have taken place. Based on a literature review, associated with the analysis of documents collected from the Peasant Women's Movement (MMC), interviews conducted with participants of this movement and, also, using work carried out with family farmers in Itaqui-RS, it is sought to support the main guiding argument in empirical evidence. Women are taken as a thematic axis that allows us to understand in their struggle and in their definitions, the presence of peasant traits in contemporaneity. These traits differentiate peasant agriculture from other family farmers, with the relationship with the land, partial insertion in markets and social reproduction as the guiding objective of the organization of production and the way of life, basic elements of this type of agriculture. It points to the change in the role of women in recent periods (since 2003), assuming their protagonism and constituting a way of thinking and acting in agriculture consistent with the definition of peasant women.