« Gender, Urban Politics and Social Reproduction »

ANA CAROLINA BRITO BRANDAO. Doctorante en droit à l’Université de PUC-Rio, en double diplôme avec l’Ecole Doctorale Droit et Science Politique de Nanterre Université (Paris X). Elle a été professeure suppléante de théorie du droit à l’Université fédérale de Rio (UFRJ) entre 2015 et 2016. Ses recherches portent sur le droit de la ville et les politiques urbaines depuis une perspective de genre.

Axe : Théorie et pratique

Mots-clefs : urban politics ; social reproduction ; multilateral agencies

Résumé : « The engagement of black and poor women in urban popular movements, especially since the 1990s, was a very significant factor, despite the few records. Their experiences are crossed by the daily demands of their places of residence, the precariousness of urban services and equipment, and for that reason they create their networks of solidarity in the communities in which they live. From the organization of collective kitchens to struggles for housing, women were articulated around demands that affected them immediately, at the time of capitalist restructuring.
Neoliberal restructuring, on the periphery, meant a « structural adjustment » negotiated between states and multilateral agencies, such as the World Bank. This adjustment reshaped the social production pattern of cities, which emerged in the international sphere as a driving force for the globalized economy. At that time, the Bank stimulated institutional reforms, teaching local governments to develop action plans, create and seize market opportunities. Municipality begin to reduce public spending to the maximum with social reproduction, transferring citizens the burden of managing access to urban services from their consumption capacity.
With the advancement of neoliberal policies, women begin to assume a large part of the burden corresponding to the functions of the city, through domestic and community work. The precarious and almost always invisible work compensated, day by day, the reduction of public investments in the sphere of social reproduction and the increase of the cost of living. For Silvia Federici, the new phase of flexible accumulation of capital brings the aspects of reproduction back to the management of family and private life, which leads to an overlapping of charges for the woman in the figure of the « mother » or « wife”[1]. Or, when they are not carried out by themselves, the role is transferred to other women in precarious employment relations. Thus, women’s « infinite » and « elastic » work became increasingly functional to this pattern of sociability.
The issue of gender in urban development has increasingly been of interest to multilateral agencies. The World Bank announced in 2010 that 37 percent of its investments in financial year 2008 in urban operations were related to gender equality[2]. How to critically understand this phenomenon, through the new contours of the theory of social reproduction in the current form of accumulation, is the objective of this communication. »

[1] FEDERICI, Silvia. Revolución en Punto Cero. Trabajo domestico, reproducción y luchas feministas. Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños, 2013.
[2] WORLD BANK. Systems of Cities: Harnessing Urbanization for Growth & Poverty Alleviation. The World Bank Urban & Local Government Strategy, 2010, p. 10.http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTURBANDEVELOPMENT/Resources/336387-1269651121606/FullStrategy.pdf Last access: 21/12/2017