Advisor: Rachel Coutinho Marques da Silva
Defense date: 25/04/2022
Abstract
This thesis aims to analyze the lives of women living in Favela da Rocinha,
in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, questioning the ways and possibilities of acting
and resisting the daily processes of oppression and how the territory influences and
often delimits their daily experience. The study was carried out from the year of
2007, which marks the beginning of the federal government’s Program for
Accelerating Urban Growth-Urbanization of Precarious Settlements (PAC-UAP),
to the present day. The object of this research is, then, women’s territoriality, i. e.,
how women’s deliberate actions and daily practices to resist oppression shape the
stigmatized territory of the squatter settlement, despite violence and the absence of
the State, which considers this territory as not belonging to the city. This thesis
intends to analyze women’s actions that reconfigure the favela’s territory through
resistance practices and participation in political collectives and NGOs. The favela
Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro, was chosen as the universe of analysis for the important
role of women as social and political activists since the beginning of the settlement
of this neighborhood, which has a long history of community mobilization and
fighting for rights. The research utilizes dialectical and inductive methodological
procedures, through the articulation of concepts from feminist critical theory with
participant observation in local group meetings in Rocinha. As a result, it is
expected that the research will contribute from a gender perspective to the
elaboration of public policies, projects and strategies for the upgrading projects of
slums that take into account the issues of women in these territories.