Women, Education and Socialisation: Transforming Gender and Power in the MST, São Paulo, Brasil

The question of women and leadership and raising women’s profile in institutions and organisations has been orientated from the outside through the investment of money in training for empowerment and leadership. Yet much of women’s capacities comes from initiatives at the grass roots from within the female contingent itself. Women whose foremost role in the community, and the family is often ignored or taken for granted yet these are skills acquired through the course of their lives and carried on through the interactive and proactive socialisation of women as lifelong learning. This was certainly the case in the Landless Movement of Brasil (MST) whereby women’s representation and leadership occurred outside of the local into state and national level. To the contrary of leadership profiles in other organisations in which women predominate at the local level and are less evi
dent outside of that. From the outset women’s role in farming for subsistence and the market was fundamental to the success of the movement. Their support for one another and the interchange of ideas formed a strong basis for their prominence in the movement and its success. This chapter focuses on women’s role in the movement, its development and longevity rooted in a transformative praxis that under wrote their philosophy and action over many years