“From Church to Struggle”: Political Trajectories of Peasant Women in Southwest Paraná

Abstract

In this article, we analyze the trajectories of women farmers in the Southwest of Paraná based on gender issues, religious formation and political action that directly implied the exercise of their leadership in the church, the union, associations, political parties and social movements. In their narratives, we find that their experiences intersect with the collective experiences of rural women and political struggles at regional and national levels. We also observe how these leaders were formed and how they reconfigure naturalized social roles as farmers. Understanding the trajectory experienced by these women brings us to the question of intersectionality, in which gender has no fixed referents, but is marked by differences in class, ethnic and racial origin, way of life, rural situation and historical experience.