| dc.description.abstract | This Master’s thesis is inserted in the research area: Sociability, Social Work
and Social Politics, and in the research line: Ethic, Gender, Culture and Diversity. We proposed
to analyze the empowerment conception and its inflexions over feminism in the neoliberal
context. We started with the analysis of the theorical-political fundaments of the empowerment
notion, its differences and implications in relation to the class consciousness complex, and we
analyze the female empowerment perspective proposed by the World Bank. The study object
demanded the apprehension of theorical fundaments about sex patriarchal relations,
consubstantial and coextensive to the class and ethic/race relations. Subsequently, we discuss
about the historicity of feminist struggles for overcoming the sex oppression in capitalism,
whose materiality is expressed in work sexual division. It was yet necessary to analyze the
genesis of the black feminist thought and the particularities which characterize black women
struggles, the nearness between black feminism and female empowerment, the Brazilian black
feminism and the contributions from struggles of black women for the formation process of the
consciousness concerning the class, sex and race/ethnics oppressions. Following the
investigation process, we discuss about the origin, tendencies and the neoliberal theorical and
practical-political limitations, its functionality to the maintenance of capitalist society and we
examine the women empowerment considering the neoliberal inflexions that are expressed in
institutionalization processes and feminist movements’ resistance. Lastly, we discuss the
female empowerment apprehending its relation with the formation process of women’s
consciousness concerning the oppressions experienced and reproduced in capitalism from the
analysis of World Bank documents about empowerment and gender, and we resume the
contributions presented by the materialistic feminism. The main results point out that the
empowerment ideology over the neoliberal fundamentals get ideological density and assume
the social function to disseminate, especially among women, that to be empowered consists of
an objective/achievement capable of putting them in another level of confrontation against their
unfavorable life condition. That occurs in detriment of the political meaning of the process of
conquering the class consciousness, which tends to distant itself from the everyday of certain
segments of women from working class. The contributions of black feminism are carriers of
contradictions between the possibilities, limits and viability of the articulation between
empowerment, class consciousness and feminist militant consciousness. At last, we discuss
about the neoconservadorism and neoliberalism in Brazil, identifying the particularities of the national conjuncture; the Brazilian black feminism, its contributions to the empowerment and
collective organization of women; and we question the possibility and viability of the
articulation between empowerment, class consciousness and feminist militant consciousness.
The investigation strategies used will be bibliographic and documentary analysis. The
bibliographical study embraced mainly productions that discussed about empowerment,
neoliberalism, neoconservadorism, black feminism thought and black feminism, class
consciousness and feminist militant consciousness. In the documental study we analyzed the
World Bank productions concerning empowerment and gender available in its own website
considering the following lines: (1) gender conception; (2) empowerment conception; (3)
relation between empowerment, neoliberalism and social class; and (4) relation between
empowerment and feminist struggles. Our survey period comprehends the years 1995-2021,
which coincide with the years of the most objectification of neoliberalism in Brazil to the
current days: the beginning of Fernando Henrique Cardoso government to the government of
Jair Messias Bolsonaro. | |
