Peasant women: the development of invisible roles to protagonists

Abstract

Women continue to enter the workforce working outside the home with double workloads of family care and paid-employment, as they are still primarily responsible for tasks with the home and family environment, including housework and childrearing. This paper examines the gender division of labor within households, the roles that are assigned to women including responsibilities in the home, backyards, and in the plots of land, highlighting that the statistics data underestimate female participation in agriculture, making them invisible. The work aimed to monitor and analyze the gender division of labor in rural settlements, and emphasizes the positions occupied by women in the activities of agro-industrialization, consumption, highlighting that rural women play a pivotal role in food security. Field notes and qualitative/quantitative questionnaires were used as research methods of the INCRA/UNIARA project. The results showed that women undertake the reproductive role and are involved in agricultural activities for family nutrition. Secondary activities are assigned to them such as a reserve workforce for farming practices, for instance activities of plantation and harvesting. From this perspective, these hierarchical relations of power between women and men tend to reflect the social structure and patterns that men tend to rise to higher positions than women thus depicting the concept of symbolic violence.

Keywords: Gender division of labor; Family Agro-Industrialization; Female
role.