Famílias - pressupostos para a política local: sombra ou alicerce?

Abstract

Associated with the research on Family and Society, this dissertation analyzes the influence of families on the politics and the insertion of women in local public government. The starting point is the historical configuration of the Brazilian family, of a patriarchal basis, with a kinship founded in biological and social ties and their specificities in the constitution of the contemporary society. The pursued course passes though three areas of knowledge: History, Sociology and Politics. As a methodological support, newspapers, magazines, electronic documents, official sites and interviews were used, as a sample of 18 percent of women who are mayors in districts of Bahia, 2005-2008. They demonstrate that besides having qualifications for the public administration, the fact of belonging to a group of family alliances, and possessing bonds of kinship and/or descending from political ancestral collaborate to the inclusion of women in the local public area. At last, it discusses about the perception of women mayors in relation to their family groups and individual trajectories in the field of private and public sphere.