Claudia Barcellos Rezende

Linking gender, class and race in Brazil1

This article examines the socio‐historical effects of the intersection of representations of gender, race, and the nation which determine black Brazilian womens subaltern social position and inform their self‐representations. This intersection is presented from two perspectives: analysis of quantitative data and a case study. Through the examination of socio‐economic data on black women participation in the labour market, it show that, when compared with white women and black men, black women are unequally concentrated in certain low paid jobs in the service industry, such as for instance domestic work. Through a brief case study, basically interviews with women from different colours and social classes — i.e. domestic workers and their employers — it shows how the particularities of domestic work inform black womens race and gender self‐definitions.

Stereotypes and National Identity: Experiencing the “Emotional Brazilian”

In this article, I examine how stereotypes are deployed in the process of experiencing national identities. Specifically, I analyse how a group of Brazilian academics who have studied in Europe and the United States have dealt with stereotypical notions of Brazilians as “warm people” who establish friendship “easily.” Ideas about a “greater emotionality,” which were often seen as negative from a European colonial perspective, are embraced and re-signified by them as a positive feature of Brazilian national identity, particularly when compared to the supposed “closed nature” of some Europeans. I argue therefore that the presence of such stereotypes contributes to reinforce a subjective sense of Brazilianess and also reveals the negotiations of power relations in the process of elaborating Brazilian national identity.

The experience of pregnancy: subjectivity and social relations

In this article, I examine from a comparative perspective how the experience of pregnancy is affected by pregnant womens social network, in an urban context. In particular, I analyse the role played by husbands or male partners, family, friends and medical specialists during gestation and how these relationships impinge on womens subjectivity. I contrast the earlier studies of Maria Isabel Almeida and Tania Salem, carried out in the 1980s, with my own research material, gathered in 2008, all of which dealt with middle class women living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, who were going through their first gestation. I argue, with this comparison, that different ways of thinking and living these relationships as well as the changes undergone in gender roles in the family affects women´s subjectivity, in particular the value given to the expression of individuality - its motivations, desires and emotions.

O parto em contexto: Narrativas da gravidez entre gestantes no Rio de Janeiro

Neste trabalho, busco refletir sobre a centralidade do parto como projeto, presente em certos grupos de gestante e mesmo em politicas de humanizacao do parto. A partir de entrevistas com mulheres de camadas medias do Rio de Janeiro que esperavam seus primeiros filhos, discuto como este material constitui-se em uma narrativa, com comeco (o desejo de ter filhos e a concepcao), meio (a mudanca nos comportamentos e na relacao com outros) e fim (o parto antecipado). Examino quais elementos e fios condutores se destacam, quais atores sociais sao incorporados nestas historias e de que modo. Argumento que a gravidez pode ser vista como uma categoria cultural que informa a experiencia fisica e subjetiva da gestacao, articulada a nocoes de pessoa e genero. O material analisado sugere que a gravidez como um todo, incluindo o parto, se torna um projeto para as mulheres pesquisadas, tensionado entre nocoes de feminilidade e de maternidade.