Agora é a minha vez de ir pra escola!: os desafios na educação para mulheres velhas em um Programa de EJA, em Fortaleza – Ce

Abstract

The aging process of the population is a world and Brazilian reality, and has a strong gender component, given the phenomenon of feminization of old age. Although the older population, especially women, are living longer, their growth is not accompanied by public policies that guarantee their rights. Among these, education emerges as a challenge regarding its targeting of women in the old age. Thus, the general and specific objectives of the study were: to analyze the meanings that the old women - participants of an EJA Program in Fortaleza - CE - attribute to education, to understand if this experience influences in their lives, from a gender perspective; Raise the motivations that drive the search for education during old age; To study the challenges that older women face in accessing formal education in relation to the gender issue; Unveiling the memories women have about their previous educational experiences; To see how women understand the EJA Program in which they participate. For this purpose, qualitative research was used, with the aid of bibliographic, documentary and field research, as well as the following techniques for obtaining information: direct observation and unstructured interview based on the Oral History Thematic method. As a field of research, an EJA Program was selected at a Municipal School in Fortaleza, with the participation of 5 (five) old female students from the school and the EJA, whose narratives were interpreted in the light of Hermeneutic-Dialectic. The perceptions, about the return or first access to the studies, were gathered in three (3) empirical categories: leisure / sociability, citizenship / belonging, freedom / autonomy. In this way, the meanings were as varied as possible, but all contributed to the need to expand educational spaces for women, where they can recognize their unique demands throughout all phases of their lives. From this change of thought and, consequently, of paradigm, it is that the school can embrace, democratically, men and women, of different ages, of class belongings the most diverse, of multiple beliefs and nationalities. This deconstruction requires the engagement of groups historically placed outside the right to education, which, recognizing themselves as protagonists, can contribute to the creation of a new societal order and a sociability based on gender equality without any kind of prejudice and / or discrimination.