Gender Studies
HIV/AIDS Prevention Behaviour Amongst Youngsters of Cape Verdean Origin Living in Portugal
Abstract:
This paper deals with the preventive AIDS behaviour of youngsters of Cape Verdean origin living in Lisbon. It focuses on the group practices and representations of AIDS and gender oriented sexual behaviour. Based on an ongoing research project, the paper argues how AIDS has the potential to become another discriminatory factor in a group already racially and socially stigmatized. This research aims to understand the relation between what young people know about HIV/AIDS and their active prevention behaviour. In addition, it explores how the immigration context may interfere in their behaviour and opinions towards HIV/AIDS and in the practices considered the safest ones to adopt. Therefore, this research is amongst those that aim to ground HIV/AIDS health education proposals on a clear understanding of how different populations or groups conceive their own healthcare. For that purpose, we selected a sample of young people from Cape Verdean origin presently living in Portugal, born in or outside of Cape Verde. Both genders were equally present (8 men and 7 women), aged between 16 and 26 and living in council estates, in other words, housing built on council’s urban redevelopment projects to relocate people from the slums. The areas of interest were chosen for presenting a high number of Cape Verdeans or their descendents: Lisbon, the Greater Lisbon and Loulé. We presuppose that belonging to these areas implies a particular social and economical context; for, although debatable, the definition of ‘council relocation housings’ conveys, to a great extent, a social categorization applied by a system of social classification to immigrants in Portugal. Accordingly, we considered eventual repercussions on the youngsters’ social experience and on their material and symbolic existential conditions, upon which rely daily decisions concerning health and prevention. A qualitative methodology of data collection was adopted, to allow an exhaustive explanatory study and the identification of several perceptual and behavioural patterns. Such methodology, developed by Rodrigues (1978,1999), is the most adequate to reach ‘irrational’ content – denomination commonly applied in Social Sciences to factors that “exist, but cannot be apprehended by reason” (Rodrigues, 1999, p.4). As the author refers, it is about reaching “that which cannot be measured, but is worthy of being known”, more specifically, the emotional content and deeper meaning of youth’s explanations regarding HIV/AIDS prevention behaviour. Thorough individual interviews were carried out, aiming to collect a material able to reveal the representations, the type of perception, the explanatory resources used, the justifications produced according to the roles occupied within a certain group, particularly, their position regarding immigration and HIV/AIDS. By using self-examination (free discourse), we were able to identify main areas of interest and concern, their importance, how they interrelate with their life and the surrounding world. Moreover, aiming to identify exactly how the interviewees place the AIDS issue within their life concerns. Intermediary Questions enable us to explore HIV/AIDS issues relevant to the project, though not spontaneously raised by the youngster during the Free Discourse approach. The Socioeconomic Questionnaire enabled an understanding of the life conditions of this group in Portugal, as well as of their family history. Today we shall discuss here the subject of family migration in its different phases and by each individual.
Quotation:
Évora, Iolanda. 2011. “HIV/AIDS prevention behaviour amongst youngsters of Cape Verdean origin living in Portugal”. Comunicação apresentada na EASA – European Association of Social Anthropologists : 9th Biennial Conference, Bristol, United Kingdom.
Brief Paper 3/1999: Identidades Estratégicas para o Desenvolvimento na África Subsahariana: O género
Abstract:
In the current context of globalisation, the African continent is seriously marginalised, which makes it necessary to reflect on development problems in order to question and identify analytical instruments capable of dealing with the complex dynamics of identities and processes that are currently interacting in African I-markets. The process of globalisation has made visible realities, ways of being and acting which until recently were only vaguely recognised in restricted contexts or even ignored through indifference. The emergence of phenomena with a global dimension, such as environmental threats or major pandemics, has given renewed importance to diversity, both biological and cultural, not only because diversity itself is the basis of life, but because in the face of global threats, action must also be global and based on cooperation. This situation calls for the need to develop a more open way of managing difference, taking advantage of it rather than seeing it as an obstacle. If we consider that one of the major barriers to global action are the difficulties of communication between different systems, which act and think differently and even assign different meanings to the same actions and identical reasoning, then we have to introduce variables in our work that help to make some of these disparities intelligible and thus reduce the noise and improve or even provide communication. In this context, interculturality becomes compulsory and enables a joint approach to identity phenomena apparently as disparate as gender and race, because in both cases we are dealing with groups that have historically assumed a peripheral role and a vulnerable position in terms of the correlation of forces with other dominant groups, sharing biological specificities and specific patterns of behaviour and meaning attribution. Identidades Estratégicas para o Desenvolvimento na África Subsahariana: O género (Strategic identities for development in Sub-Saharan Africa: gender) was presented at the 1st Portugal – China Congress organised by the University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro in Vila Real, 19-23 April 1999.
Quotation:
Grassi, Marzia. 1999. “Identidades estratégicas para o desenvolvimento na África Subsahariana : o género”. Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão – CEsA Brief papers nº 3-1999.
Working Paper 183/2021: Dans le Dernier Sursaut de l’Estado da Índia (1951-1961): Témoignages inédits de deux femmes portugaises
Abstract:
During the last decade of Estado da Índia, the testimonies of two Portuguese women who embark on a trip to Goa have caught our attention, getting us to write Dans le dernier sursaut de l’Estado da Índia (1951-1961) : témoignages inédits de deux femmes portugaises. Born in 1926 and part of the first generation of Estado Novo, the authors belong to an educated elite and share an acute political awareness of the regime, choosing even to engage in the metropolis opposition movements. They left Portugal for Goa, the territory of their political exile, a society totally alien to them and an important moment of personal experience. The last decade of the Portuguese domination sign the last burst of Estado da Índia which is moving towards the return of its territories to the Indian Union in 1961. The stories left by these two women articulate a history of the Portuguese empire, learned on school benches, portraying an experience of the Salazarist regime and the confrontation of the authors’ experience in Goa. There they make their way on a tightrope, created both by the distance to the colonial administration and by the difficult penetrability of Goan society. In this interface and stemming from an everyday of existential precariousness, they get to know this society and engage in the cultural and political challenges that cross it. Back in Portugal and later on, one of the authors write her memories and the other wish for the exposure of the letters, that she daily written to her family . The memoirs and letters constitute a counterpoint testimony, on the one hand to that of the Portuguese of the Empire (whose statuses and belonging were defined in a colonial society) and, on the other, to that of the diasporas belonging to the Empire (Portuguese, Goans , Indians) by where it is also interesting to read the center from its periphery. Their testimonies and their reflections have very current accents on the way of writing, of thinking and living on existential, material, and symbolic borders that both separate and unite people.
Quotation:
Khouri, Nicole e Joana Pereira Leite (2021). “Dans le dernier sursaut de l’Estado da Índia (1951-1961) : témoignages inédits de deux femmes portugaises”. Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão – CEsA/ CSG –Documentos de Trabalho nº 183/2021.
Working Paper 181/2021: A Vulnerabilidade à Pobreza das Mulheres Responsáveis por Famílias Monoparentais no Brasil e o Papel das Políticas Públicas
Abstract:
The deterioration of women’s income, and their consequent vulnerability to poverty, is particularly critical in the case of women who are the head of single-parent families – being them the only provider to the household, gender inequalities in the labor market affect them more significantly. A Vulnerabilidade à Pobreza das Mulheres Responsáveis por Famílias Monoparentais no Brasil e o Papel das Políticas Públicas seeks to understand the life experiences of these women, in Brazil, as well as the role of the State in alleviating their economic and social difficulties, where the effect of the Bolsa Família Programme will be studied in particular. The analysis of the Brazilian reality is enhanced by the presentation of relevant official statistics, complemented by a qualitative methodological approach based on semi-structured interviews conducted with women in this situation. It is concluded that their life experiences are affected by several hardships that are still relatively under-researched, but also by positive aspects related to their condition as single parents, above all in terms of their autonomy and perception of greater emancipation, as well as living in a safe and emotionaly stable environment.
Quotation:
Araújo, Clareana Lopes de e Sara Falcão Casaca (2021). “A vulnerabilidade à pobreza das mulheres responsáveis por famílias monoparentais no Brasil e o papel das políticas públicas”. Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão – CEsA/ CSG – Documentos de Trabalho nº 181/2021.
Working Paper 173/2018: Women in Politics: Portugal as a case study
Abstract:
Democracy is about the power of the people. In order to sustain, implies (at least) representativeness of its major groups. When majority rules minorities, lobbies complain when not happy and some of their demands are met; but the system doesn’t turn totally in their favor if it goes against the interests of a larger assembly. When minority rules the majority, problems arise (populism against elite, for instance); and sooner or later there’s a significant shift in society. Quantity gives power. Numbers do count in Democracy. Women are the majority of the population. It was not always so, but nowadays it’s an unquestionable fact. For cultural, institutional or socioeconomic reasons they were submissive for centuries to a system that did not recognize their public activity. They were not involved in decision making and rebel against that. At first, their demands were not met. But waves are changing. As long as democracy prevails and women’s numbers and percentages won’t drop, they’ll probably continue to raise awareness to their cause, increasing their power and influence in society. The evolution of women’s empowerment is the focus of Women in Politics: Portugal as a case study, that tries to analyze the main characteristics, causes and effects of this process, based on theory and world references or statistics. Portugal was chosen as a case study for not being much researched or not sufficiently so far.
Quotation:
Galito, Maria Sousa (2018). “Women in politics : Portugal as a case study”. Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão – CEsA/ CSG – Documentos de Trabalho nº 173/2018.
Working Paper 167/2018: Ancient Roman Politics the Vestals – Women’s empowerment
Resumo:
Ancient Roman Politics the Vestals – Women’s empowerment is about vestal virgins of ancient Rome. First chapter concerns goddess Vesta, her legends and what she represented. Second chapter is about who Vesta and why her priestesses were important to roman religion. Third chapter explains where they lived. Four chapter lists names of known vestals until Emperor Tiberius (a larger list is included in Appendix 2) and discusses situations involving their deaths or role model. Vestals had political and religious power in ancient Rome. Their peaceful presence at the forum was one of the first attempts (if not the first) in favor of gender equality or women’s empowerment in the public sphere. Vestals were virgin priestesses of a goddess that protected the walls of Rome with her perpetual fire, which was pure and had no statue. Their rituals were based on legends such as Amata or Rhea Silvia that, regardless of being true or not, were religious and cultural references for people’s lives and should not be neglected, because they contain information that explains why the State respected the vestals and punished them so severely.
Citação:
Galito, Maria Sousa (2018). “Ancient roman politics the vestals – women’s empowerment”. Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão – CEsA/ CSG Documentos de Trabalho nº 167/2018.
