Gênero e espaço urbano: Política pública de habitação e acesso das mulheres trabalhadoras a moradia em João Pessoa, Brasil

Abstract

The thesis entitled “GENDER AND URBAN SPACE: Public housing policy and access of working women to housing in João Pessoa, Brazil, has as its main objective to reflect on the production of urban space from the analysis of the access of low-income working women to popular housing, through public housing policies implemented in the city of João Pessoa. Our analysis focuses on a specific, yet multidimensional and diverse group of women: workers who live in peripheral urban spaces in the city of João Pessoa, state of Paraiba. The investigation starts from the concrete experiences of this group of women, historically marginalized and political subject of this study, to understand in a broader way one of the main urban social problems in Brazil: gender inequality and injustice in access to housing. Theoretically, the analysis is based on the issue of housing as a problem that integrates the issue of gender and the right to the city. Our hypothesis starts from the understanding that the city, among other things, is the product of a class public housing policy that historically marginalizes women's access to housing. To advance this starting premise, we raise two questions: 1) What were and what are the concrete limits to working women's access to housing? 2) At present, does women's access to public housing policy deepen the process of feminization of the periphery or not? The readings carried out enabled us to understand that the issue of homelessness for women is due to a set of historical factors that are linked to the sexual division of labor, wage inequality that condition women to lower incomes than men. , including among those who are active in the labor market and the absence of public policies for social housing aimed at low-income women. Through field research with the application of questionnaires with the women of the PMCMV, obtaining data from the Municipality of João Pessoa (PMJP) and Caixa Economica Federal, we verified that in the city of João Pessoa/PB, there is indeed a differentiated access for women housing in urban space. In which, the percentage of male ownership is predominant in housing units in all sets built by the National Housing Bank (BNH) (1960 to 1986). Thus, it is understood that there is a concentration of economic resources by men that enables access to material goods, especially private ownership of land and housing. The conclusion reached at the end of this thesis is that there is a Feminization of the periphery. That is, the precariousness of women's lives in the periphery occurs amidst a series of contradictions and challenges. Although the public housing policy of the PMCMV has been implemented to guarantee the right and access to housing for working women, on the other hand, processes have emerged that contribute to the precariousness of their lives in the urban periphery of João Pessoa. The precariousness of women's lives in the periphery goes beyond housing conditions.