Práticas feministas de autogestão em empreendimentos formados por mulheres na Rede Economia Solidária e Feminista

Abstract

The Solidarity Economy [SE] acts in the rearticulation of the economic to the other spheres of social action, representing a multiform movement for income generation and local development, having self-management as a paradigm of organization (Gainger, 2007, Singer, 2008, Vieta, 2015) . The significant participation of women in ES resulted in the formation of a national network of self-managed enterprises by women: the Solidarity and Feminist Economy Network [SFEN]. Considering the expressive participation of women in SE and that such context influences organizational practices, it is necessary to systematize such practices, based on a substantive vision of the organizations, giving visibility to the experiences of these women (Fraser, 2002; Gherardi, 2012 , Martin, 2003, Nicolini, 2013, Ramos, 1989). In this sense, the objective of this research is to investigate how the self-management practices of women in the SFEN reflect the substantive rationality of a feminist management and concretize as a feasible model of productive organizations. The conceptual apparatus related to feminist studies in this research encompasses Nancy Fraser's (2002) studies on gender justice, Patricia Yancey Martin’s (2003) studies on feminist management practices, and authors of postcolonial feminism such as Mohanty (2006), Santos (2017) and Maria Lugones (2007), who lead the discussion to the peripheral contexts, a necessary perspective when observing the women's movement in the SE. The methodological approach of the research is quantitative and qualitative, as recommended by Ramos (1996) in his proposal of sociological reduction. The data collection of the quantitative step was operationalized through the use of data from two sources: the database mapped in Brazil in the years 2010 to 2013 by the National System of Information in Solidarity Economy [SIES] and 150 questionnaires structured in scale Likert of five positions with the women who compose the SFEN in the state of Ceará. The quantitative data were analyzed through the multivariate statistics Factor Analysis and Multiple Regression. Data collection from the qualitative stage was carried out by observing the practices of women in the day-to-day management of the SFEN projects, resulting in 55 hours and 30 minutes registered in 20 field journals since 2016 (Creswell, 2007). Another qualitative source was semi-structured interviews carried out with five producers of the network, focusing on the thematic oral history of Meihy (2002), which is aligned with a post-colonial perspective of capturing the peripheral voices. Qualitative data were analyzed under the Discourse Analysis approach proposed by Gill (2002). The data of the quantitative and qualitative steps were triangulated in order to provide a closer approximation of the phenomenon and the understanding for the achievement of the proposed objectives for this thesis research, approaching the phenomenon observed (Creswell, 2007). The results point to a proof of concept, related to the intersectionality of gender justice and feminist management practices, as proposed by Fraser (2001, 2007), showing that intersectionality is a condition for understanding the issue of women. The study also allowed to identify new feminist management practices in SFEN, under the self-management paradigm: (i) It enables flexible working from the perspective of otherness; (ii) Develops collective and networked learning; and (iii) Promotes an organic management of conflicts. Research has shown that feminist self-management practices are performed with some level of instrumentation, however, under the predominance of the substantive management vision, where collective action is paramount, respect for individual differences, the search for a balance between subject and organization under an identity of values (Ramos, 1989; Serva, 1993).