Economia doméstica: atuação profissional em assistência técnica e extensão rural na perspectiva de gênero

Abstract

This research had as a goal to analyze the practices performed by Home Economics professionals working in Technical Assistance and Rural Extension (TARE) in Tocantins, from a gender perspective, in order to analyze whether or not there is a reinforcement of gender relations in their activities. This study has started from the hypothesis of that: the professional activity nowadays is going through an structural issues of the gender, emphasizing the woman as a social being who works with themes related to household chores, to children and to family, ideas which are widespread as a characteristic from the course creation in Brazil, not being possible to stop it in the current context. As well, it is considered that the trajectory during the graduation and professional experiences before the insertion of the professionals in the Rural Development Institute of the State of Tocantins (Ruraltins), it will shape the practices of the home economists interviewed. For this, it was used the methodology of oral history, in which recorded were narratives, memories and subjectivities of four professionals with a rural extensionist position, graduated in Home Economics, working at Ruraltins. In addition to the interviews, the study counted on written documentary sources, sending questionnaires via e-mails to the public TARE companies in Brazil and to coordinations of the courses of Home Economics that still provided the undergraduate course, aiming to make a background on the theme. In the face of the narratives, it has been observed that home economists have been in constant comparisons with other professionals, in order to realize that even though they are in the public space/the labor market, gender representations still permeate what men and women "must" do, as well as, the social places of each ones; usually, by sending them to the internal, closed, monitored space of the institution, performing administrative activities, while men tend to participate and represent outer and open spaces of visibility. Thus, analyzes of the narratives indicated that the choice of the graduation, its professional trajectory and the work environment itself were influenced by the gender issues, resulting in an unequal power of relationship between the genders. It is therefore necessary to make visible, value and recognize the work done by the professionals, since the needs of the public served, as well as for the operation of the Institute, are not limited to goods and services, only, but also the administrative issues, well-being, care, affection, social relations, access to information and public policies. As well as, contribution to the process of self-organization of groups/associations, encouragement as political subjects, the strengthening of the autonomy of the subjects, among other aspects not always possible to quantify. The gender perspective in this study allowed us to analyze and understand the characteristics that home economists have experienced in specific ways, similar and different, from the complex and diverse social relations that occur between the genders, in the institutional and daily conflicts that they face in their work places.