Processo de empoderamento das mulheres na Cooperativa Habitacional de Trabalhadores: a forma de habitar em questão.

Abstract

This dissertation considers the housing public policy in Brazil, specifically the “Minha Casa Minha Vida” Federal Government program, run by housing cooperatives. The focus of this study is the process of social organization of the Housing Cooperative of Employees of Posts and Telegraphs – COOHRREIOS / RS in the city of Pelotas, where the cooperative members mobilized, since 2009, to acquire land ownership of regularized lands for use and production of housing unit. In 2011, two hundred and thirty eight cooperative members of COOHRREIOS in Pelotas sent to the financial agency Caixa Econômica Federal (CEF), the Project 1 – called July 25, at the Três Vendas neighborhood. At the cooperative organization the aim is to try to describe the space of social participation, particularly married women, cooperative members and dependents, in the composition of COOHRREIOS, and their role in the family. This subject was chosen because the social program “Minha Casa Minha Vida” considers the woman as a manager of the house, so the purpose is to try to understand the practice established by women in the housing cooperative and its consequences in everyday life. Therefore, the aim is to reflect about the organization process, understood as a form of "sociation" (SIMMEL, 2006) in which women's participation could mean learning how to empower their action in the cooperative and family. The study promotes a dialogue among theories that discuss about the "right to the city", by associating, the "live" and the "bargaining power" in light of feminist theories. In the lattest theories, it identifies the points of intersection and divergence in relation to the autonomy and empowerment of women cooperative. The hypothesis of the dissertation is that the representation of women in the family in a management condition means the recognition of the right of their participation in decision making inside the COOHRREIOS / RS. Consequently this condition assigned to women puts them on the responsibility of the possession of the housing unit, which can be developed into forms of empowerment and autonomy. The methodology that was used for analysis and description envolved documents about Hounsing Government Programs, the regulations, laws and technical notes. The documents about the Cooperative Workers, their regulations, internal rules, statute, registration of cooperative people, informatives and other materials, that explain the functioning of the cooperative, were also incorporated into the analysis. These documents enabled the assembly of charts and graphs from data collected from primary sources provided by COOHRREIOS / RS. In general, this study established that the empowerment and autonomy of cooperative married women are still under construction, because the condition of manager of the house offers them the opportunity to participate in the center of the decision-making in the cooperative, but not all the women interviewed have the perception of her potential to change the power relations established by gender issue.