“Quem pariu, mantém e balance?”: uma análise da Política Nacional de Assistência Estudantil (PNAES) frente às demandas das estudantes-mães nos Estados do Pará e Maranhão.

Abstract

This thesis proposed to analyze the student assistance actions aimed at student mothers implemented through PNAES in the States of Maranhão and Pará, represented, respectively, by the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA) and the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), in order to identify whether and how they have contributed to ensuring the right to education at undergraduate level. To this end, as a theoretical contribution, dialectical historical materialism was used in a critical feminist perspective, in order to discuss the condition of women-mothers in a peripheral, patriarchal and racist capitalist society, marked by the sexual and racial division of labor. This was a qualitative study conducted through 15 (fifteen) mediated semi-structured interviews with student mothers with children aged 00 (zero) to 06 (six) years old who were beneficiaries of daycare assistance and early childhood assistance offered by UFMA and UFPA, respectively. As a result, analyzed using the content analysis technique, it was possible to understand that there is an undeniable persistence of inequalities that affect the lives of women mothers, perpetuating the “matriarchy of misery”, with negative consequences on all dimensions of these women's social lives, subjecting them daily to different expressions of the “social issue”, such as the difficulty of staying at university. Furthermore, on a legal level and in the implementation of PNAES through aid, it represents progress, but with many challenges to be overcome. In the reality of UFMA and UFPA, the initiatives remain restricted to the direct transfer of resources, and although the recognition of the beneficiary women interviewed is unanimous that this transfer contributed decisively to their retention and completion of their undergraduate courses, aid alone as it exists today is not enough to meet the diversity of their demands. Therefore, as suggestions for aid, they indicated: in the specificity of UFMA, the change of the name of the aid and its objective, in order to allow the covering of various expenses, in addition to educational ones; greater dissemination of notices and the reduction of bureaucracy, avoiding excessive documentation for requests or accountability and; the increase in the number of scholarships offered at institutions, as well as the value of aid. For universities, in general, they indicated the carrying out of Permanent Education actions with Administrative Technicians and Teachers professionals, so that they are not only sensitive to the needs of mothers, but also that they are aware of the legislation that guarantees their rights; actions to promote maternal mental health; a different approach to meeting the needs of atypical mothers. However, even more evident is the desire of those interviewed to build physical spaces of support and support in institutions, such as breastfeeding rooms, toy libraries and especially the university daycare center. Thus, although women can only be truly free and equal in a world organized by a sociability adverse to that of capital, this should not prevent the construction of public policies that serve to satisfy their most urgent interests, as every right that women conquer through their historical struggle brings them closer to the joint objective of total emancipation of the working class.