“Sem mulher a luta vai pela metade”: mulheres, feminismo e política no MST

Abstract

The Rural Workers Movement is a social movement fighting agrarian reform that is not characterized as a feminist movement. However, more encompassing than the agrarian question or the struggle for land, the primary objective of the Landless Workers Movement, since its foundation is the struggle for "a fair and equal society". For this, it would also be necessary to construct new gender relations, beginning for inside of the movement. However, the main leaderships of the Movement during their trajectory were men. It is from this observation that the main research question of this thesis arises: In a mixed movement (composed of men and women), how can women occupy political spaces? Based on this question, we have as a general objective to understand the forms of articulation of women internally in the MST, the experiences that forged the formation of the consciousness and the necessity of organizing women inside of the movement, in search of recognition and political legitimacy for the subject woman. For that, an extensive bibliographical review on the subject of rural women and agrarian reform was carried out, as well as a deepening of the theoretical and organizational issues of the MST followed by a documentary research, with reference to MST data and documents, as well as booklets and training books, in order to verify how the gender guidelines in the Movement were officially addressed. Subsequent interviews were held with women militants of the MST who assumed leadership positions within the Movement in order to discuss how the militant trajectory of these women leaderships occurred in a local and state context and how this leadership is exercised. In this investigative process, we have identified some organizational phases of women within the Landless Workers Movement, from the time of the first land occupations and the first National Congress of the MST to the present day. The internal training and selforganization of MST women strengthened them as militants and helped to break down some (in a symbolic way) barriers against the political participation of women in the Movement. Advances in women's participation and the importance of women's guidelines for the Movement as a whole are undeniable and can be symbolized by the constitution of the Gender Sector. It is perceived that there is a diversity of understandings, appropriations and acceptances of the feminist guidelines among the women farmers. The non-identification of a good part of the rural women with the broader feminist movement has led to the construction of a feminism based on the reality of the countryside, the popular peasant feminism, which emerges from the social movements of women linked to “Via Campesina”. Uncovering the trajectories of landless women helps us to understand that the MST's struggle story is also the peasant women's struggle story, even if these stories are generally invisible. Recognizing the importance of women's struggle in the MST and giving visibility to these stories is fundamental to understanding the dynamics that make up this social movement.