O Conselho da Mulher de Santa Cruz do Sul : construindo alternativas para demandas femininas.

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the operation of the Woman’s Rights Municipal Council from Santa Cruz do Sul (CMDM), through the processes of participation/representation of the participant women of this public space. The Woman's Rights Council in Santa Cruz do Sul has some particularities in relation to the characteristics of its foundation and to the participative profile of its representation. In other words, in this dissertation we rescued the history of this council, we analyzed its performance to understand how the category gender is articulated in this social group and if its intervention enlarges the possibilities of women´s democratic participation in terms of fights for their interests. Finally, to be able to understand those aspects we investigated both the structure and operation of CMDM as well as the representatives that legitimate this democratic space. We investigated the CMDM minute book analysis, the laws that govern this council, the explanatory pamphlets of the same, and we applied a questionnaire to the participant counselors of this council as well as interviews with selected counselors. Based on the collected data we can affirm that the performance of CMDM in the public sphere brought important progresses for the gender subject. Through the ransom of its history we noticed that the participative profile of its representation demonstrated political force in the sense of reactivating its actions and of enlarging the possibilities of performance in the public sphere, bringing a series of modifications in this council, among them we can emphasize: the alterations of the internal regiment, the reactivation of the Woman's Rights Office of Defense, the routines of lectures on domestic violence in the schools, the conclusion of the project House of Passage, among other conquests. For this, CMDM can be considered as a participative and functional space on behalf of woman’s rights.