O Programa Bolsa Família, a moralização da pobreza no Brasil e a mulher beneficiária

Abstract

This study analyses sociopolitical meaning of moralization of families in poverty situation based on the foundations of the Brazilian current transfer program, Programa Bolsa Família (PBF), and the repercussion of this process under a gender perspective. Developed in three sections this dissertation begins with depuration of the conceptual notion of moralization as well as its correlation with two social justice matrices: the first concerning to income redistribution for overcoming social inequities, and the second resulting of acknowledging women as holders of the support income to the families. The first chapter presents the process of constitution and the structure of a poverty moralizing policy in Brazil based on unfolding of two thesis that serve as its substrate: the negative income tax and the human capital theory. The PBF’s peculiarities are privileged objects of the second chapter. In this section, public policies were considered as devices that hold and create a subjectification space for the beneficiaries, and are grounded on control techniques to those poor families that request State aid for subsistence. At third section, it is examined how such device of public policy to fight poverty incorporates and institutionalizes gender patterns that ends up reinforcing the association of women to the traditional motherhood role as an expression of their moral and public responsibility.