Cuidado, reprodução social e primeira infância: uma análise da política de educação infantil na cidade do Rio de Janeiro sob a ótica do direito ao cuidado

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the right to care in early childhood and access to early childhood education in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Its general objective is to understand how gender, race, and class inequalities shape access to care, in order to reflect on the challenges posed to guaranteeing the right to care in the country. It seeks to answer the following question: how does the panorama of early childhood education policy in the city of Rio de Janeiro connect to the challenges posed to the Brazilian State in guaranteeing the right to care? To this end, a hypothetical-deductive approach was favored from an interdisciplinary perspective. The research is based on social reproduction feminism and black feminism as theoretical-analytical frameworks. These lenses allow critical reflections on the power relations and inequalities present in the social organization of care in early childhood. The work is structured in three parts: the first was dedicated to exploring how gender and race hierarchies are part of Brazilian capitalism and the social organization of care in the country; the second addressed the emergence and development trajectory of the perspective of the right to care in public policies, the relationship between care and human rights, and the role of law in allocating responsibilities for care; and finally, the third part focused on the panorama of early childhood education in the city of Rio de Janeiro. At the end of the work, a dialogue was established with the critical theory of human rights. From this, it was observed that limited access to early childhood education is a historical problem in the city of Rio de Janeiro that makes the full realization of the right to care, in its various dimensions, unfeasible. Based on official data and strategies adopted by families to provide care for young children, it was possible to see how gender, race and class hierarchies, together with state action, shape access to early childhood education and care practices, placing families – especially women and children – who are black and live in favelas in a situation of greater vulnerability and social exclusion. This dynamic is connected to the global interaction of gender and race in capitalism and its socio-reproductive contradictions.