Issues of gender and race in education through the eyes of black women

Abstract

The Rede de Mulheres Negras do Paraná is a non-profit, autonomous and independent organization, founded in 2006 to provide visibility, guarantee the demands of the black population of Paraná, claim and expand the implementation of public policies for black women, that carries out projects in the areas of education, culture, health, promotion and defense of human rights, generation of work and income, appreciation of gender identity, sexuality and race/ethnicity. Those matters will be mobilized in this article through narrative interviews with ten of its members. In this sense, the article, with a qualitative approach, aims to perceive the influence of educational processes on the development of militant black women from the perspective of members of the Rede de Mulheres Negras do Paraná (RMN-PR). Theoretically, this paper joined studies that approach the themes of gender and race in an aspiration to an intersectional perspective. The speeches of members of RMN-PR pointed to a school that has the possibility of sheltering, and does so in some situations, but repeatedly neglects, subordinates and discriminates against these subjects, in routine processes of coercion. There is a possibility, however, of an education based on their mothers’s experiential knowledge to fight and resist, in addition to the potential for sheltering through RMN-PR, transforming school and family environments.