Master of Arts / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / L. Susan Williams / This study focuses on experiences of women workers in Brazilian street markets, as told in their own words. Feminist epistemology informs this study, including face-to-face interviews as well as participant observation. Participants share how they became informal entrepreneurs, offering a unique perspective of market work that is local and personal. Two major concepts inform this study. First, local gender regimes emphasizes context as influential in women's practices and perceptions; both opportunity structures and cultural milieux restrain earning potential. Equally important is the second concept, luta, or "fighting energy," a concept that emerged from interviews. Luta expresses agency that guided these women toward an entrepreneurial decision. Interviews reveal that traditional expectations, conducive to acceptance of gendered experiences for these women's mothers and grandmothers, were transformed into new meaning in the marketplace. However, they do not openly deny dominant ideological practices. In a process that includes both resistance and accommodation, they maintain their business, but keep religious ideologies of obedience and responsibility for household tasks. These ideologies, mostly unacknowledged, may keep some of them as feirantes –market vendors who see themselves and their business as limited. To others, the street becomes a preparatory stage to engage in larger business endeavors; they become empreendedoras informais, who demonstrate an entrepreneurial vision to take the business beyond a small market stall. Findings support the feminist postulate that gendered structural factors significantly shape experiences of women, but also that a strong element of agency marks practices of Brazilian women in the marketplace. In particular, this study contributes to an international scholarship by and for women, exploring cultural influences on their life processes and perceptions. Literature on women and the informal economy should continue to include the pervasiveness of gendered ideologies without neglect to women's capacity for producing change through human agency.

[pt] A partir do questionamento de quem é a classe trabalhadora atual, esta pesquisa se propõe a compreender e analisar o trabalho informal sob a ótica das mulheres camelôs. Para isso, foram realizadas entrevistas semiestruturadas com quatro mulheres ambulantes da cidade do Rio de Janeiro, a fim de perceber as dinâmicas sociais entre elas e o espaço público. Assentando a discussão na necessidade de se atentar aos papéis de cuidado, impostos social e historicamente às mulheres, esta pesquisa atualiza as discussões a partir do contexto da pandemia de coronavírus. A região central do Rio de Janeiro, espaço delimitado para a pesquisa, ao mesmo tempo que é marcado por disputas entre a classe trabalhadora e o poder público, influenciado pelas elites dominantes, aparece, nesta pesquisa, como palco de construção de autonomia, liberdade e cidadania pelas camelôs, caracterizando-se também em campo político. Assim, esta pesquisa procura investigar as práticas coletivas, em um contexto individualizante, muitas vezes imposto pelo sistema neoliberal, percebendo exemplos de resistência coletivas e práticas que podem ser denominadas feministas. A pesquisa adotou como enquadramento teórico as teorias da reprodução social desenvolvidas pelos autores feministas-marxistas da chamada Teoria da Reprodução Social (TRS) e da intelectual negra Angela Davis, buscando realizar uma leitura sobre quem é classe trabalhadora atual, não deixando de fora uma investigação generificada e racializada, além de uma análise pautada na realidade concreta enfrentada pelas sujeitas desta pesquisa, não apartando teoria e prática. / [en] Based on the questioning of who is the current working class, this research aims to understand and analyze informal work from the perspective of women street vendors. For this, semi-structured interviews were carried out with four women street vendors in the city of Rio de Janeiro, to understand the social dynamics between them and the public space. Basing the discussion on the need to pay attention to the roles of care, socially and historically imposed on women, this research updates the discussions from the context of the coronavirus pandemic. The central region of Rio de Janeiro, the specific area of the research, concurrently marked by disputes between working classes and government, influenced by the ruling elites, appears in this research, as the setting of construction of autonomy, freedom and citizenship for the women vendors, featuring the region as well as a political field. Therefore, this research aims to investigate the collective practices, in an individualizing context, often imposed by the neoliberal system, noticing examples of collective resistance and practical actions that can be denominated feminists. This paper adopted as its theoretical framework the theories of social reproduction developed by feminist-marxists authors known as Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) and from the black intellectual Angela Davis, pircing an understanding about who comprises the current working class, not leaving out a gendered and racialized investigation, in addition to an analysis based on the concrete reality faced by the subjects of this research, not separating theory and practice.