O que é ser mulher no rural contemporâneo: uma abordagem etnográfica no município de Marechal Cândido Rondon

Abstract

This paper analyses and discusses the women’s perceptions over themselves when it comes to their identity as rural, urban or rural-urban person, or, as we call, rurban. The interviews were made with 30 women from the town of Marechal Cândido Rondon, in the State of Paraná. They all live on the countryside, in farms they own with their families. Out of those, 15 work in town and return to the farm daily and only 15 work in the farms. Our goal was to give voice to these women to talk about themselves when it comes to the research topic. When we talk about these women’s place, we not only refer to geographic and physical location, but mainly, to the one connected to the territorial, cultural and social, directly perched by identity, which has a strong presence in ethical relationships, in this case, of the “Germany”, term that we discuss in this paper, since our interviewees are from a town where the cultural bonds from their colonization origin are strongly valued. Therefore, the comprehension about the rural woman, urban woman or rural and urban woman will be in their speeches placed in their representation. The research methodology was qualitative and of ethnographic approach. By the end of this research, we came to the conclusion that these women show a direct relationship between the farm and the city reflected in their way to live, even when they live in the farm. This is also what happens with those who work outside the farm, but they know that the dependency connection with the city is effective and necessary, either for trades or socialization. They don’t intend to move to the city, since the rural environment is the idealized place to live, but not necessarily to work. Many of them admit that they would not had found financial independency working in the farm. For the women who work in the farms, the result of their work. tied to other family members, is an important source of economic reproduction to the family, but it is also of social reproduction. To those who work in the city, they also reckon the importance that their wage has to the other family members, even to help with the farm maintaining.