The Relational Dynamics of Becoming Popular Feminist Subjects: The World March of Women and Rural/Peasant Women’s Organizing in Brazil in the 2000s

• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Date: 01 September 2021
• Author: Elsa Beaulieu Bastien,Dominique Masson
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211015171
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211015171

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 240, Vol. 48 No. 5, September 2021, 42–58

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211015171

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

42

The Relational Dynamics of Becoming

Popular Feminist Subjects

The World March of Women and Rural/Peasant Women’s

Organizing in Brazil in the 2000s

by

Dominique Masson and Elsa Beaulieu Bastien

The constitution and consolidation of rural and peasant women as popular feminist

subjects in Brazil are the result not only of processes internal to these constituencies but

also of relational dynamics involving cross-class and cross-movement popular activist

organizations. Since the end of the 1990s, organizations and activists identifying with the

World March of Women in western Rio Grande do Norte and at the national scale have

consciously engaged with rural and peasant women and assisted them in becoming and

consolidating themselves as popular feminist subjects. Relational dynamics have also been

important in the (unfinished) process of transforming, extending, and deepening the dual

meaning of “popular feminism” in Brazil.

A constituição e consolidação das mulheres rurais e camponesas como sujeitos femini-

stas populares no Brasil são o resultado não apenas de processos internos desses grupos,

mas também das dinâmicas relacionais que envolvem organizações ativistas populares de

classes e movimentos. Desde o final da década de 1990, organizações e ativistas que se

identificam com a Marcha Mundial das Mulheres da região Oeste do Rio Grande do Norte

e em escala nacional têm se engajado conscientemente com as mulheres rurais e campone-

sas, ajudando as mesmas a se tornarem e consolidarem como sujeitos feministas populares.

As dinâmicas relacionais têm sido importantes também no processo (incompleto) de trans-

formação, extensão e aprofundamento do duplo significado de “feminismo popular” no

Brasil.

Keywords: Political subjectivity, Popular feminism, World March of Women, Marcha

das Margaridas, Centro Feminista 8 de Março

In 2000, the first edition of the Marcha das Margaridas brought together

20,000 rural women workers from all over Brazil to march on the capital

(Aguiar, 2015). Since then, rural and peasant women have been increasingly

visible in the public sphere, progressively achieving voice and legitimacy at the

national scale. They have succeeded in naming their own realities, building

common visions of the changes they want, and creating a national political

agenda that includes a long list of demands such as the recognition of women

Dominique Masson teaches at the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies, University of Ottawa,

and currently leads a research project on solidarity building in the World March of Women. Elsa

Beaulieu Bastien is the research coordinator of that project. She did her doctoral fieldwork on the

World March of Women in western Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil.

1015171LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211015171Latin American PerspectivesMasson and Beaulieu Bastien / THE WORLD MARCH OF WOMEN IN BRAZIL

research-article2021

Masson and Beaulieu Bastien / THE WORLD MARCH OF WOMEN IN BRAZIL 43

as agricultural workers; labor and social security rights, access to land owner-

ship, credit, and technical support; health care and education; and action

against violence against women. Not only have they gained public visibility for

themselves and for their claims but they have also gained recognition by

Brazilian society in the form of the first public policies aimed at promoting

rural women’s autonomy (see Ministry of Agrarian Development, 2015).

Brazilian rural and peasant women have now become political subjects in their

own right (Aguiar, 2015; Siliprandi, 2009).

The concept of political subjectivity “denotes how a single person or a group

of actors is brought into a position to stake claims, to have a voice, and to be

recognizable by authorities” (Krause and Schram, 2011: 131). Inquiring into

political subjectivity implies, as its starting point, not “taking the existence of

subjects for granted” (Krause and Schram, 2011: 127; also Dagnino, 1998: 42). It

suggests paying attention to the processes and practices through which

Brazilian rural and peasant women, as individuals and as collective actors,

have come to see themselves as “subjects of their own lives, agents of social

transformation, . . . sociopolitical power players” (Maier, 2010: 30), and “bearers

of rights” (Dagnino, 1998: 48). The development of political subjectivities is

shaped by historical and sociopolitical contexts in which it is tied to practices

of constituting collective identities and subject positions in the political realm

(Dagnino, 1998; Krause and Schram, 2011). Aguiar (2015) has analyzed the con-

stitution of political subjecthood in the Marchas das Margaridas as the progres-

sive coming together of women from different social positions. What we want

to do here, rather, is to draw attention to the processes through which Brazilian

rural and peasant women have come to see themselves as political subjects of a

particular kind. The “coming into political subjectivity” of rural and peasant

women in Brazil, it can be argued, is part of the historical constitution and con-

solidation in Latin American activism of popular feminism as a gender-class

politics anchored in the experiences, needs, and survival struggles of women

of the popular sectors.

Brazilian rural and peasant women were active, directly or indirectly, in

farmers’ and rural workers’ movements long before their contribution was vis-

ible or recognized (Aguiar, 2015: 55; Siliprandi, 2009: 127). Many observers and

researchers have documented that rural women’s organizing and mobilizing

as “women rural workers”—that is, around a collective identity threading

issues of gender within those of class—started in the early 1980s. Thayer (2010:

94–100), for instance, retraces the circumstances that led to the birth of the

Movimiento de Mulheres Trabahaldoras Rurais (Movement of Women Rural

Workers—MMTR) in 1982. Deere (2004), Siliprandi (2009), and Aguiar (2015)

provide historical accounts of the progressive development of such gender-

class—popular feminist—politics in rural and peasant women’s organizing in

Brazil.

In this article, we contend that the constitution and consolidation of rural

and peasant women as popular feminist political subjects in Brazil cannot be

fully understood by looking solely at processes internal to their organizing. It

is also the result of the work of other popular feminist actors, coming together

in cross-class and cross-movement alliances with rural and peasant women

organized in both non-mixed and mixed-gender organizations. Relational