Questions/Answers

The project “Female shellfish collectors with pride, Afrodescendents forever" is the result of interinstitutional interventions (state and civil society) carried out by the Secretariat of Policies for Women (SPM –Ba), and targeting women who are quilombolas dedicated to artisanal extraction of oysters and other shellfish, in the communities of Capanema and Baixão do Guaí, located in Maragojipe-BA, within the Marine Extractive Reserve Iguape Bay. The project objects at the productive inclusion and empowerment of these women, aiming at their social repositioning, improvement of life and access to the rights of citizenship, as well as the recovery of natural stocks of native oysters in free life, which has been falling in the last decade, negatively impacting women’s income. The female shellfish collectors are organized by the recognition of their cultural identity, the maintenance of their values and territories of work, today reduced by the impacts of human intervention: large enterprises, environmental accidents, pollution and predatory extraction, resulting in the degradation of areas of production, reduction of shellfish stocks, as well as unhealthy working conditions and low economic results. The processing of the shellfish takes place in the domestic circuit, under inadequate hygiene conditions, disqualifying and devaluing the activity of the female shellfish collectors, which in turn is exploited by the middleman who buy seafood at derisory prices. To change this reality, the project implemented a community-based oyster culture, the first in the region organized and managed by women, acting in two lines of action: 1) Implementation of productive infrastructure 2) Technical, organizational, managerial and political- cultural development of women. The innovative character of the project is also in the field of governance, expressed in the coordination, articulation and execution of specific and transversal actions, in an intersectional perspective, through a set of successful practices that can be reapplied.

Its main objectives are the socio-productive inclusion and the empowerment of 30 women who are shellfish collectors, through economic autonomy, life improvement, social repositioning and access to the rights of citizenship. In addition, it collaborates with the recovery of natural stocks of oysters, since the cultivation of these molluscs in captivity reduces the demand and the collection in free life within the estuary of the Iguape Bay Reserve.

The project is aimed at women, conceived as workers, participants in development and subjects of rights. It understands that there are patriarchal gender barriers that ideologically support gender inequalities and deepen the social impacts of poverty, to the detriment of women. In the cultural and symbolic universe that involves fishing, man's position is hegemonic and the role of women follows hierarchies that reproduce the sexual division of labor, defining tasks and dividing territories. It also believes that women have historically been left out of development processes, hence the need to promote infrastructural, educational, technical-organizational and managerial means that meet their specific needs, especially the poorest and most vulnerable. Not to mention that women's lack of financial autonomy often leaves them hostage to situations of violence, especially domestic violence. This is the case of the 30 quilombola women, traditionally dedicated to the artisanal extraction of oysters and shellfish, who now fight for the preservation of their territories of identity and work, now threatened.

The project improves public services once it promotes and facilitates access to these services by these women, who live in rural, hard-to-reach quilombola communities. When they are included productively and increase the income of their families, they are able, for example, to move to the nearest urban center where they can have access to better health and education services. The communities of Capanema and Baixão do Guaí do not have water treatment, but organized in a productive group, the female shellfish collectors have already been able to acquire water purifiers. In addition, they have now gained a place of speech and visibility that gives them greater ability to vindicate and pressure local authorities for better services in their communities. Finally, it is through the economic autonomy and empowerment of these women that the project has made possible the access to services and consumer goods that before they did not have access.

Women face more obstacles to gain access to paid work, obtain credit, other productive resources and generate income than men, and are historically ignored by the public power. The women in question live in Maragogipe, within the Marine Extractive Reserve Iguape Bay, on the coast of the State of Bahia, Brazil, where the rivers Guaí and Paraguaçu intersect. There they survive from the extraction of shellfish, notably the oyster - the commercially most valued and demanded sea fruit and the basis of the social reproduction of their families. This activity, nowadays already much reduced, is threatened by the destruction of the mangroves - traditional territories of work - mainly by the predatory action of big companies installed in the surroundings of the Iguape Bay, with harmful environmental consequences, affecting mainly women, which depend on mangroves as the only alternative for survival and financial autonomy. In view of these issues, the project has privileged the social and political qualification of these women, enabling alternatives and productive means, based on the local potentialities, traditions and experiences of these subjects. The idea is that discovering these potentialities, recognize themselves capable of transforming them into productive opportunities for income generation, economic autonomy and empowerment.

The project is aimed at afrodescendents quilombola women who live in poverty and who have in artisanal fishing the basis of the social reproduction of their families. Such activities are developed individually or by the family group, in the domestic context, in precarious conditions of hygiene and safety, with limited production and low productivity, resulting in insufficient incomes that do not guarantee a food standard that is recommended for them and their families. Limitations of social, environmental, technical, organizational and managerial constraint the perspectives of empowerment of these women, in the way of social equity. The project starts from these limitations to propose sustainable and gender-based actions, developed locally, that promote women's economic and social autonomy, respecting and improving their traditional knowledge and practices, in order to guarantee their permanence and participation in the preservation of their territory physical and cultural, of belonging.

It is an experimental project, in execution, whose innovation factor is in management in governance, expressed in the articulation, coordination and execution of specific and transversal actions, at intersectoral and interinstitutional level, covering an interdisciplinary field and linked to the same objective . Assuming that the persistence of social and gender inequalities is incompatible with the construction of sustainable societies, it seeks to intervene in this dimension of social life in the perspective of sustainable human development. With a focus on the segment of quilombola women, the project has been pursuing public policies conquered by feminist movements, but has had to overcome the scarcity of public resources destined to development policies, attracting different governmental and non-governmental institutions in the provision of joint services, according to their attributions and specialties. This joint action has contributed to change the political culture of institutions, which are compelled to raise awareness and qualify their technical staff, adopting principles and democratic methodologies, dialogical and participatory, where women have voice, their interests are respected and their needs met.

The initiative follows the model of native oyster cultivation, which has been successfully developed for more than 15 years in the communities of Kaonge and Dendê, located in Santiago do Iguape, Cachoeira municipality. This experience served as a reference and was adapted to 30 women shellfish collectors, 15 from the community of Capanema and 15 from Baixão do Guaí. Based on this experience, these women participated in the definition of the criteria for selecting the participants and assembling the structures, made of bamboo, with seed collectors produced with PET bottles. In addition, they seized farming and management technologies locally and envisaged concrete possibilities of generating family income, producing quality oysters, with less effort than in free-living extraction, as well as contributing to the expansion of stocks in the estuary and mangroves and collaborating in the dissemination of new oyster seeds in the environment. This production system challenged them to seek new markets and change the marketing system, selling directly to end consumers, oysters in dozens rather than by weight. These learning gains motivated the creation of the Association of Shellfish Collectors and Quilombolas - Mariquilombo, an organized enterprise managed in an associative way only for women.

With regard to human resources, the project has been implemented through different collaborating partners, made up of agents from different governmental organizations, such as the Secretariat for Policies for Women (SPM), BAHIAPESCA, Federal of Recôncavo University, as well as NGOs such as the American organization Rare. For the implementation of oyster farming, Rare financed the biological monitoring and local coordination of the project, around R$ 150,000.00. The SPM financed the purchase of equipment such as oysters purifier, freezers, among other equipment in the total amount of R$ 41,600.00. That is, the total cost of two years of project was around R$ 200,000.00.

Yes

The initiative is successful and can be adapted to other contexts, among women living in the coast of the state of Bahia. With a length of 932 kilometers, Bahia holds 12.4% of the entire Brazilian coast. The project represents a productive and income alternative for the large contingent of poor women who take their livelihood from the extraction of shellfish, a predominantly female activity. Studies carried out by the Federal of Viçosa University (2014) show high rates of female heads of households in these contexts, noting that in many cases women are mainly responsible for family support, depending exclusively on mangroves. The experience of SPM, on the other hand, related to the confrontation to the violence to the poor women of the coast, has revealed that such actions will only be effective, if simultaneously realized to the opening of productive alternatives and of income generation for these subjects. The results of the project point to concrete movements for the economic and social emancipation of these women, as the initiatives and the development of these groups of female shellfish collectors, internally in the organization and in the public spaces of the state and of the market, with direct familiar life.

The initiative is sustainable in all aspects. From the environmental point of view, it is sustainable because the cultivation of oysters is a social technology that does not harm the environment, on the contrary, it collaborates with the preservation of the mangroves and with the reproduction of the oysters, increasing the stocks of these molluscs also in life free. From a social point of view, the project is sustainable and necessary because it is based on the valuation of female shellfish collectors as participants in local development. Through educational and participatory processes, they recover their cultural and identity values and their self-esteem as women and quilombolas, seeking in the traditions the recovery of their knowledge and experiences. From an economic point of view, it is an activity based on cooperativism and the principles of Solidarity Economy, capable of producing and generating income for dozens of families, offering the consumer market a quality product, competitive, and at a fair price.

The initiative was managed based on the needs and demands of women, who participated in all the processes of planning and implementation of the actions in the different stages of the evolution of the project. This participation, while allowing them to appropriate all the knowledge constructed during these two years of implementation of the actions, imposed on them changes in thinking and action, from their way of seeing themselves in the world, to social and gender relations in which they are involved, besides their condition and position and their social role as women, workers and citizens. The interinstitutional experience points to a sustainable perspective, a verifiable fact in the expansion of the self-esteem and self-affirmation of these women, and in the development of initiatives in the productive, organizational and entrepreneurial field, and their resulting confrontations and experiences, which required them organizational capacity, command , control and decision making, as indicated by its participation in two fairs in Salvador, capital of the state, for solidary marketing of its products.

Yes

To evaluate the results, a qualitative research was carried out through the application of questionnaires, answered individually by each of the thirty female shellfish collectors participating. A focus group was also held, with the participation of some of them, in which questions were raised and they were comfortable to discuss and comment, without interventions, only under the observation of the researchers. The purpose of these evaluation instruments was to measure subjective, behavioral and knowledge changes through participation in the project, such as the rescue of the pride of being a shellfish worker, the importance of collective work and female autonomy, and awareness of preservation the environment, among other issues. From the objective point of view, the project has been evaluated based on the generation of extra income for the shellfish collectors, however the cultivation is still in the initial commercialization process, having only one restaurant as a fixed client. The expectation, however, is that oyster farming can increase the family income of shellfish farmers by at least 30%.

Research carried out with the shellfish collectors observed numerous changes: they came to know the advantages of oyster farming; the importance of preserving mangroves and not collecting oysters smaller than five centimeters in free living; there was a conscious transformation of behavior, going from the individual work system to the collective work; it is glaring the raise of their self-esteem and change of attitude, revealed in the way they defend their opinions publicly, confidently and knowingly their rights. The shellfish farmers began to organize themselves to work in groups, as is the case of crop surveillance, without any interference from project coordination. They built a collective monitoring plan for the areas of cultivation, distributing themselves in groups of three people, each responsible for surveillance on a day of the week, thus ensuring the security of the enterprise against theft of equipment and oysters. The construction of new stands and collectors, the capture of new seeds, and the mobilization of the group for the construction of the association's headquarters are other indications of change. This mobilization resulted in the award of the group by the Consul Company, receiving R$ 10.000,00, used to buy the land where the headquarters will be built.

1) Number of conscious female shellfish collectors that oyster farming is a good income alternative and have adopted oyster farming; 2) Number of female shellfish collectors who started to collect oysters of the correct minimum size (5 centimeters) established by the Reserve Management Agreement; 3) Number of female shellfish collectors who came to understand and practice crop surveillance; 4) Number of female shellfish copllectors who discuss with each other about oyster crops as a good income alternative and the importance of mangrove conservation; 5) Indications of progress in the organization of crop surveillance (scale, plans); 6) Number of women and persons in families trained, according to training modality; 7) Number of women and people in the communities participating in events, campaigns, trade fairs and other activities; 8) Number of women working collectively in the tasting, processing and marketing of oysters; 9) Number of women still working with oyster extraction in free life; 10) Number of female heads of household; 11) Composition of the families of the women: children and total number of people according to kinship; 12) Source of income and participation of the results of the female shellfish collectors in family income.

Created with the participation of shellfish farmers, the initiative focuses on the improvement of women's extractive activity, under the motto adopted by “Fishing, Conserve, Prosper”. The idea is that, aware that they take oysters and others shellfish for their social reproduction, women are committed to the conservation of the environment and the continuity of extractive activity for future generations. Using social technologies, different government agencies and NGOs join the Secretariat of Policies for Women - SPMBa, contributing in fields of knowledge, moments and different times of action, with actions that respond to the demands and interests of the female shellfish collectors. We highlight RARE, Fundação Vovó do Mangue; Marine Extractive Reserve Bay of Iguape (RESEX); Federal of Recôncavo da Bahia University (UFRB); Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio); Rural Development and Action Company (CAR / SDR); BAHIAPESCA; City Hall of Maragogipe, among other local agents. However, the success of the initiative stems mainly from the direct participation of these women in all implementation processes, since they are recognized and valued in their knowledge and traditions, which is a decisive factor in strengthening their self-esteem. To this end, the educational and formative actions are methodologically coordinated and integrated around two main lines: environmental education and community-based oyster farming. Through these lines it is proposed the introduction and adoption of good practices and new work practices, no longer individualized but carried out collectively, such as community surveillance in the areas of oyster farming and non-commercialization of oysters in the process of breeding the species. The joint and participative work gives these women experiences and learning in the field of collective management, experiences and concrete practices of planning, organization, direction and management, in the end, favors the acquisition of information and knowledge indispensable to the management of their own associative enterprise.

1) Contribute to the construction of women's autonomy and empowerment that goes beyond access to economic and material goods, requiring actions that break the unequal relations of gender power - a patriarchal basis and foundation of the different faces of violence against women. 2) Training processes that aim at female citizenship demand reflection on gender equity, while taking into account the practical needs (income, health, ...) and the strategic interests of women - related to their position of power in society. 3) Actions from the gender perspective presuppose strategies that allow women to identify in their own field, gender inequalities and conditions that establish asymmetries, and define the subordinate social position of women in relation to men, interfering in their living conditions, work and social affirmation in the world 4) Institutions, government agencies and related NGOs should be identified as potential partners in the human, material, financial and knowledge resources demanded by women - subject to intervention 5) Evaluate the project together identifying the achievement of objectives, the emergence of new demands and the planning of new actions - the basis of the group's organizational motivation and sustainability. 6) Establish a relationship of trust and respect among the various agents, communities and subjects of the intervention, considering it a collective construction with common objectives, defining responsibilities and commitments with transparency. 7) See leadership as a circumstantial condition, opportune to all, according to their experiences and knowledge, building a democratic climate, seeking shared solutions and overcoming conflicts. 8) Use approaches that they consider contextualized subjects, without losing sight of the fact that men and women take different appropriations from social spaces, where, even in similar conditions of poverty or in the same territory, they experience these situations in different ways, experiences and needs.