Empowerment of Kaiowa and Guarani women in the struggle for the recognition of indigenous rights and ethnic-cultural identity

Abstract

This article addresses the female leadership Kaiowá and Guarani, their practices and the motivations evoked by them, in the struggle for rights and conquest of greater autonomy of gender and their communities, in the context of the Dourados Indigenous Reserve, in Mato Grosso do Sul / Brazil. The objective was to carry out an ethnographic study of these women in order to interpret, through their perception, the levels of power that became the focus of these strategies of female struggle. The information was obtained from secondary and primary sources (semi-structured interview, questionnaire), through a quantitative qualitative analysis. The Kaiowáand Guarani women’s movement is expressed in four levels of empowerment: (1) of the individual (2) of the family (3) of the community (4) of the society, although there are still many difficulties to overcome.