Abstract
Abstract In this research, our aim is to analyze how gender relations are manifested in the narratives of women rural workers, in coffee farming in the Cerrado Mineiro Region, in a post-colonial perspective. It is a qualitative research, the empirical material of which consists of narrative interviews conducted with 14 rural coffee workers in the municipalities of Patrocínio, Carmo do Paranaíba and Monte Carmelo, in the state of Minas Gerais. The empirical material was submitted to the thematic analysis technique. The results suggest that gender relations are expressed through inheritances of colonialism, which constitute the themes identified: (1) constructed subordination; (2) hierarchical spaces; and (3) colonial domination.
Highlights
As far as time goes, in most part of history, women have always been subordinate to men, not sharing the world on equal terms (Beauvoir, 1970; Tedeschi, & Colling, 2014)
The literature dealing with the labor market in Brazil does not turn its attention to rural workers (Guimarães, Brito, & Barone, 2016)
Grifftihs and Tiffin (2007) argue that feminisms are an important field of interest for postcolonial discourses, due to three reasons: (1) feminist and postcolonial policies are opposed to the domination exercised by patriarchy and imperialism; (2) debates in colonized societies about gender or colonial oppression consists of the most relevant political factor in women's lives; and (3) feminisms and the post-colonial are concerned about the ways and extensions that representations and languages become crucial in the formation of identities and in the construction of subjectivities
Summary
As far as time goes, in most part of history, women have always been subordinate to men, not sharing the world on equal terms (Beauvoir, 1970; Tedeschi, & Colling, 2014). Ashcroft, Grifftihs and Tiffin (2007) argue that feminisms are an important field of interest for postcolonial discourses, due to three reasons: (1) feminist and postcolonial policies are opposed to the domination exercised by patriarchy and imperialism; (2) debates in colonized societies about gender or colonial oppression consists of the most relevant political factor in women's lives; and (3) feminisms and the post-colonial are concerned about the ways and extensions that representations and languages become crucial in the formation of identities and in the construction of subjectivities One of these languages able to sustaining postcolonial criticisms consists of the narratives of the colonized, because as they lived the colonial experience and witnessed the processes imposed, such as “domination, dehumanization, [...] loss of identity, racial prejudice [...], in short, all the damage that the unbalanced human nature can provide, they became authentic spokesperson for the post-colonial period” We argue the importance of adopting a post-colonial perspective in order to deconstruct the dominant discourses
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