O que cabe às mulheres no Programa Bolsa Família? Uma história de muitas Marias, Mahins, Marielles e Malês

Abstract

This dissertation weaves the movements of a qualitative research whose objective was to understand the effects of the Bolsa Família Program (PBF) whose objective was to understand the effects of the Family Grant Program (PBF) on the life of women beneficiaries of the program in the family, analyzing the role they play in their daily lives and how they perceive the benefit in their lives. The PBF is the main policy of income transfer adopted in Brazil, considered as a strategy to minimize the effects of poverty in the life of a large population that is served by the social assistance policy. The family is taken as the central space of action of the PBF, with women having a central role in the face of existing conditionalities to receive the resource, which requires actions to take care of their children in the fields of health and education, strengthening an ideology of care around the maternal figure. Fieldwork was carried out with a group of women attended at a Reference Center on Social Assistance (CRAS), in the city of Juiz de Fora - MG, during a period of 7 months. As strategies for the construction of the data, the participant observation associated to the field diary was used. In addition, a discussion group was held, which included 18 women (beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries) and, subsequently, four semi-structured interviews, based on the life history method with women in the PBF. Among the results of the research, we identified that, for women, female ownership is understood as an important political advance and contributes to decision making within the household, producing direct effects on their lives. They also do not identify problems with the fulfillment of PBF conditionalities, considering actions that are understood as "naturally maternal". Therefore, in spite of the contribution of the PBF in guaranteeing minimums for the survival of these women and their families, we consider the importance of recognizing the contradictory aspects of such a policy, since the "natural" work of social reproduction supports politics, which rests on a material and concrete interest of the patriarchal ideology, questioning the processes of autonomy that literature points out.