As relações de gênero e o saneamento: um estudo de caso envolvendo três comunidades rurais brasileiras

Abstract

Brazilian rural areas differ from urban areas by a series of characteristics, including the division of labor, based, mainly, on gender relations. In the absence of effective sanitation services, women are usually more affected by daily tasks such as collecting water and disposing solid waste. In addition, the awkwardness of open defecation and precarious menstrual hygiene is greater for women. Gender relations inside the rural sanitation turn the women the potential target group for a public sanitation policy. Once empowered, women become capable of triggering actions at the household level that generate impacts on the health and well-being of the family. At the community level, a greater representation can contribute to the development of more equitable, resolutive, sustainable public policies and, above all, to promote gender equality. Therefore, this study investigated the association of gender relations and sanitation in two rural communities of Bahia - Nova Esperança and Barreiro Amarelo - and a Settlement in the state of Goiás - Settlement Pontal do Buriti. Through qualitative methodology, with ethnographic techniques such as grounded theory, we sought to identify the sanitary functions mainly performed by men and those mainly by women, indicating the possible consequences and results of these activities. Through the documental analysis, was investigated how some Brazilian sanitary public policies and rural public policies contemplate gender relations and sanitation.With this work, was concluded that Brazilian sanitary legal frameworks do not contemplate gender issues or only make notes that are still very embryonic. Relating to public policies aimed at rural areas, the coverage of gender relations is still in a very incipient and obscure way. As for the field findings, they reinforce the key role of women in relation to household sanitation activities, such as water collection and management. These results, therefore, go back to the hypothesis that women and girls are the most affected when the sanitary solutions are absent and/or precarious. In this way, the space and the need to create a public sanitation policy that is sensitive to gender issues is confirmed.