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Cooperative: a female experience in the art of producing success

In this paper I seek to examine ways of women mobilization in a working class Housing Cooperative. The cooperative under study had financial and technical support from an NGO, which helped to organize it through family workforce for self-construction. The cooperative proposed as a new form of political and economic organization of society invests in the power of collective articulation accumulated in the history of the working classes. When updating important socio-cultural principles, like the spirit of solidarity and articulation of the sociability network, the women members began to participate in traditionally masculine tasks and to exercise a subtle and creative leadership, giving a specific sense of collectiveness to the group of families.

Cooperative; Working Class; Gender Relations; Female Leadership


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