UBUNTU: I am because we are – challenges for rural women fight for public policies post-coup 2016

Abstract

This research paper aims to reflect on public policies for rural women in the political, media and legal context during the political coup that Brazil has been going through since 2016. To this purpose, the critical currents of feminism and gender relations are retransmitted, covering part of the Directorate of Policies for Rural Women (DPMR) experience at the former Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA), describing the concerns and approaches adopted in the process of elaborating public policies for gender equality in the rural context. Against the political and institutional coup in the background, policies for women, especially rural women, lose ground in the new platform of government, marked by the resumption of a neoliberal agenda in which the role of women is seen as secondary to the society and the economy. To demonstrate this, the text retrieves news from newspapers (online), through the sites they were posted, presenting the discourses and narratives that reinforce gender stereotypes. The findings indicate the need for new forms of resistance and resilience, in view of what happens at academy, alternative media, training and mobilization meetings, and especially in the different agroecology spaces. Furthermore, the text reaffirms the importance of the debate on equality between men and women. Human, sexual and reproductive rights are, more than ever, a banner for the affirmation of life and equality. Demonstrations contrary to different forms of violence against women are the key to the feeling of impunity and condescension. Ubuntu, an African expression, was recovered in the sense of affirming our alterity in relation to the other: I am because we are; almost a mantra for those times.