Masculinidades, gênero e pobreza : o lugar dos homens na proteção social básica de Niterói - RJ

Abstract

This research has a qualitative character and is developed under genre studies perspective and the contributions made by Oral History, having the aim of answering the following question: what is the place of (poor and urban) men and of male in Social Assistance Policies? This investigation was developed because of the interest in identifying in which social nets (if primary and/or secondary) poor men living in metropolitan area in Rio de Janeiro are. So, this study presents the perceptions had by men who are entitled and benefited in Family Benefit Program (Programa Bolsa Família), about their experiences and trajectories searching for social rights. On the other hand, it also presents the register of professional perceptions by social assistants who are responsible for the social policy implementation in the city of Niterói/RJ. This dissertation emerged from questions about the quantity expansion of oneparent and female one-person family arrangements, as an irrefutable explanation about the absence of men in the range of Public Social Assistance. It is understood that the explanation mentioned favored the visibility of certain tendencies, as a conforming of a male invisibility that is present in the space of Social Policy and inside the Social Service professional environment. Among those tendencies it was evident that there is a process of homogenization of poor families, which access and use the social assistance services offered in basic social protection, either represented under a one-parent model or under a family group named as female one-person group. Homogenization which happens in various conditions, what involves as discussion about the existence of official and non-official criteria, which guide and influence the design and the execution of programs, projects and social policies, as the using of a speech based on abandoning, especially male abandoning (in some cases, referring to an imagined male abandoning).