Rural working women, syndicalism and political action: the historical construction of the female rural worker category

Abstract

In this work I analyze letters sent to the National Constituent Assembly and oral narrative of rural working women who, during the 1980s, led a political movement for recognition of their work and rights. The idea is to show how the categories Female Rural Worker, Gender and Sexual Division of Labor intertwine with a context of historical resistance by the Brazilian peasantry Thus, I examine the collective construction of the Female Rural Worker political category and, more particularly, the process of inclusion and participation (marked by discriminatory practices) of rural working women at the Rural Syndicate of Pitanga, in the central region of Paraná, an important agent in the debates on women’s social security rights and political participation. According to Cordeiro (2006), the use of the term Female Rural Worker is quite recent in Brazil. So, based on the oral reports of union member and rural worker Zenóbia Cedorak de Godoy, I look into the nuances of the political practices of rural working women who claimed one single identity, that of female rural workers, rejecting classifications that identified them as housewives and, consequently, associating them with the domestic/reproductive sphere as well as denying their rights.