Mulher, gênero e encarceramento: implicações sociais e éticas.

Abstract

The accelerated increase in women's imprisonment in Brazil is taking off the invisibility problems posed by motherhood in prison. Different discourses sustain or question the permanence of children and their mothers in this environment. Based on values that involve historically defined roles, certain ways of being a mother are valued while others are devalued. To contribute to the debate, this study analyses the effects of the intersection of gender norms and disciplinary relations on maternity experience in prison, identifying controversies in terms of values, highlighting the power relations and the discourses and practices that sustain. Based on the study of literature and legislation we conducted an empirical study in five female prisons of four Brazilian states. Pregnant women and those one whose children were with them in prison (n = 22) and professionals who work in these prisons (n = 19) were interviewed. Also, there were made focus groups with pregnant women and those one whose children were with them in prison (n = 5) and health professionals (n = 3). The scripts of the interviews were defined per the following themes: 1) Maternity perceptions in prison and the role of father and family 2) Perception and care during pregnancy and childbirth; 3) Health care of the child; 4) Perceptions of the environment, standards and social interactions; 5) Experience of separation and referral of children to families and / or institutions. From them all it was made thematic analysis of the collected material. It was found that reproductive health care provided to these women is strongly marked by a medical, prescriptive and reductionist approach. This medicalization of care, when integrated into the disciplinary and punitive order that characterizes social relations in prisons, intensifies gender inequalities and domination relations, violating their reproductive rights. In prison, some institutional mechanisms, in articulation with normative motherhood, promote certain ways of being a mother which are characteristic of this context. In this context, the mechanisms of punishment and reward and manipulation privileges which are proper of the penitentiary system, when integrated with other control practices that women-mothers perform on themselves due to the care and protection of children, increase the control that criminal administration exercises over them. This intensification of control makes these women even more vulnerable, exposing them and their children to psychic and moral sufferings from which they have limited resources to defend themselves. There is an urgent need to apply alternative penal measures to prison for pregnant women and women with children, as envisaged in Brazilian legislation and recommended by the UN (2010). The need to question the logic of expanding criminal intervention as a strategy to control poverty and contested forms of life is highlighted.