“Tudo é violência, viver é violência!”: representações sociais e vivências de mulheres em situação de rua

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: This paper analyzed the social representations of violence towards homeless women in the Center-South region of the city of Belo Horizonte/Brazil. METHODS: This is a qualitative research in which 22 questionnaires were applied to homeless women and narrative interviews were conducted with three of them and data analysis was based on content analysis. RESULTS: Data analysis is constructed from three movements: (a) presentation of the research context, (b) the profile of the research participants and (c) the categories of analysis combining the questionnaires and interviews carried out - namely, violence and gender identity, place of life, social insertion or protection from violence?; occupation and violence, 'companion' violence and institutional violence. DISCUSSION: It was identified that violence is something present in the daily lives of homeless women in Belo Horizonte, and it directly marks the ways of thinking, feeling and acting of these women. CONCLUSION: We understand that violence dictates and organizes ways of thinking, feeling and acting of women in street situations, including the need to reconstruct and (re)visit categories previously elaborated to explain processes that require, in addition to theorization, the experience of being in the world, facing the phenomena that signify and re-signify identities, in the face of the strategies they outline around violence and the form of self-preservation.