O contexto demográfico das viúvas da seca no semiárido setentrional da Paraíba (1970-2010)

• Ano de defesa: 2023
• Autor(a) principal: Silva, Brenda Luíza Patriota Lima e
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte; Brasil; UFRN; PROGRAMA DE PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO EM DEMOGRAFIA
• Palavras-chave em Português: Migração; Seletividade migratória; Semiárido setentrional; Papéis de gênero; Dinâmica familiar; CNPQ::CIENCIAS SOCIAIS APLICADAS::DEMOGRAFIA
• Link de acesso: https://repositorio.ufrn.br/handle/123456789/52662

“Drought widows” is the term used by Ab’Saber (1999) to characterize the population of women who are widows of living husbands, left behind in migratory flows carried out selectively by gender and working age. This phenomenon has become frequent throughout the Northeast region, especially in the northern semi-arid region, a region with the most severe droughts, in which public policies to overcome the water supply crisis were fragmented and emergency, making the economy fragile and incapable of retaining manpower in the period in which the second Brazilian demographic transition begins. It is proposed to describe the demographic context that caused the occurrence of women "widows of the drought" based on data from the Brazilian Demographic Census of 1970, following through the historical series from 1970 to 2010 the evidence that demonstrates the overcoming of socially established vulnerabilities by through power relations and subordination between gender roles, changing family dynamics due to female empowerment achieved through public policies that promoted the improvement of human capital due to the value changes widespread during the second demographic transition (LESTHAEGHE; SURKIN, 1988 ). Taking the population between 15 and 49 years of age as the analysis population, as it covers the reproductive period and coincides with the age at which there is a greater probability of consensual cohabitation, divorce, children and labor migration, with greater male flows. Due to the difficulty in finding queries about migration common to the entire series, we initially sought to use the Femininity Ratio as a proxy for male emigration in the northeastern semi-arid region in 1970, comprising 754 municipalities. According to the Foz Group (2021), variations in this indicator require further explanations to understand the composition by sex of the observed population, and sex-selective migration may be one of its causes. The Femininity Ratio for the aforementioned region in that year was categorized into three levels, the highest being the one that includes municipalities whose Femininity Ratio was greater than 130 women for each group of 100 men, in this group there are 26 municipalities, of which which 14 are part of the federative unit of Paraíba. Therefore, the great expressiveness of municipalities in Paraíba in this cut, lies in the need for further investigations to understand the occurrence of the phenomenon in Paraíba, using the migratory balance to prove that the differential of the Ratio of Femininity initially observed was due to male emigration and not to female immigration to the state. Preliminary analyzes reinforce assumptions such as that of Camarano and Abramovay (1999) in which masculinity would be higher in rural areas, as well as the Youth Dependency Ratio would be higher in these areas than in urban areas. In the same way that the urban transition highlighted by the Foz Group (2021), first supported by Zelinsk (1971), cooperates to reduce long-distance migratory flows and greater flows at medium and short distances, with the reurbanization of new migratory spaces, causing productive decentralization, especially after the year 2000 with the policies of interiorization of vocational and higher education. Just as periods of economic crisis encourage return flows, as Dota and Queiroz (2019) present, the data found in the migratory balance confirm the reduction in emigration and the increase in immigration over the historical series. Subsequently, the analyzes of the Femininity Ratio and as a proxy for the Migratory Balance in the federative unit of Paraíba and in the selected municipalities, together with the age structure, make it possible to observe the effects of the drop in fertility and aging of the local population, due to changes in family dynamics and to the highest levels of declared female leadership in the state of Paraíba in the historical series.