The invisibility of women work: work relations in the cocoa farming

International Journal of Development Research

Volume: 
08
Article ID: 
14639
4 pages
Research Article

The invisibility of women work: work relations in the cocoa farming

Claudete Ramos de Oliveira and Ana Elizabeth Santos Alves

Abstract: 

This article has as objective present the analyses of the strategies of capitalist accumulation to make women work unviable, women rural workers in cocoa nuts producing farms organized historically in masculine hierarchical structure. The analysis of the visibility or invisibility of women workers aims the understanding of their lives course using as mediator means their memories, as well as memories of workers through open and semi-structured interviews. The temporal space elements constructed around the cocoa production ascension and decline in the municipality of Camacan, Bahia, between the 1970 decades and today. Cocoa nuts were and are the source of wealth and the deep difference between social classes (the holders of the land property in contradiction with the holders of workforce), the genres (demarcating the wages in the basis of gender) and “race” (at the time where brownish and black represent women workers majority). The conclusion is that the female job is invisible and inserted in a working force exploration net and that class relations are not the only ones prevailing in the cocoa production agriculture space, but that there also exist sexual division working relations that reinforce the differences.

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