Mulheres camponesas e a quebra das cercas do latifúndio educacional: do campo ao ensino superior

Abstract

This article aims to identify the obstacles to the entry and permanence of peasant women in the Licentiate Degree in Countryside Education, at the Senador Helvídio Nunes de Barros Campus, at the Federal University of Piauí. In this qualitative research, interviews were carried out, conducted through a semi-structured questionnaire, with five peasant women students of the course. The interviewees reported as limiting factors for both admission and permanence at the university: the non-permission of their husbands, maternity, formal work, financial difficulties, distance from the places where they live to the university campus, lack of accommodation and place to leave their children of non-school age, reduced supply of scholarships, and prejudice from students from other courses. Even though the Licentiate Degree in Countryside Education is the result of the struggle of social and popular movements, it is still excluding and limiting when it comes to the entry and permanence of peasant women, both due to university space and management and the patriarchal system, which imposes on these women the constitution of a family and the care of the children instead of the academic formation. For these peasant women, the long-awaited training in a higher education course is something possible and transformative, even if it is necessary to break the fences of the educational latifundium.