Homens e mulheres nas estradas, relações de género no programa de reabilitação e manutenção de estradas 1992-2000: estudo de caso no distrito do Alto-Molocué

Abstract

The participation of women in the Road Construction and Maintenance Program with the intensive use of labor, is an attempt to put government policies into practice, in order to incorporate the gender component in development programs in Mozambique. This program appears to respond to the major problems of impassability on rural roads in Mozambique, whose objective is to rehabilitate roads without very high costs, while increasing incomes in rural areas through the hiring of local labor. The present work aims to analyze the extent to which the involvement of women in the construction of roads can bring about changes in the sexual division of labor, and what influences the practices adopted in this program have on the existing structure. It is assumed that the fact that men and women perform the same type of tasks in the works, in the long run, can disrupt the traditional sexual division of labor, and build new forms of work organization. The experience of implementing this program in the Vacha rehabilitation brigade, in the district of Alto-Molocué, province of Zambézia, served as a basis for the collection of empirical data. Participant observation, semi-structured interviews and the collection of life trajectories, were the techniques used in this collection. Preliminary conclusions demonstrate that new practices are manipulated, as life strategies. The new sexual division of labor is reappropriated by communities according to needs. The adoption of new practices does not imply rejection of existing ones, it is that they sometimes cohabit, making a kind of cultural synthesis.