Chile, Solidaridad - "Theatre of the Oppressed as a tool of emancipation of women" by Romina Daniela Maldonado and Villar (ca, pt)

Eight months ago are conducting a workshop with public speaking and body language employed 
in private homes organized SINTRACAP (Union of Household Workers). What motivated us in 
the first instance as a group to make these workshops is our approach, recognition and 
encouragement of transformation, multiple inequalities regarding women who live in today's 
society. Inequalities that shape a network of overt oppression in the feminization of 
poverty, wage discrimination, sex segregation of the labor market, sexual violence and 
harassment, prostitution, etc.. ---- This experience has been crucial for us because we 
have not only raised awareness of the various deep injustices that oppress women who 
experience patriarchy as their gender and / or sex. We have also witnessed the little help 
and / or support, and focus precarious women workers with jobs related to the reproductive 
sphere. These women, the alternative to address these structural conditions, organize 
unions to help them be a voice empowered able to conquer their labor, educational and 
political rights are left alone. And it is at this point that the workshop has taken 
effect, as it has allowed us to establish cooperation, where we support to make visible, 
to raise awareness and try to reverse logic of domination together structures that are 
present in our bodies, in our culture and in our speeches.

To enable personal and collective transformation, we need to integrate a joint reading of 
the capitalist context and its relationship to patriarchy. In this context (capitalist) 
social structure and the oppression of women has taken other particular characteristics, 
not because women are specific but because it takes a unique type of domination. Thus, 
with the emergence of capitalist society, the reorganization of the sexual division of 
labor became necessary. The separation between workplace and residence, between wage labor 
and domestic work between public and private space, there was also a radical separation 
between the feminine and the masculine. Thus the activities of the public world, 
productive paid work, political participation, scientific, cultural creation and art 
became more valued social activities in terms of material resources, and symbolic power. 
Women are constantly being discriminated against in these spaces and those that are of 
popular origin, such as domestic workers house live more directly oppression, forced to 
perform the duties reproductive poorly rated, invisible in politics, excluded from the 
creation science, art and culture.

Thus, we have proposed as a first task, so far doing the workshop, we adopt denature the 
role as women in society. This has meant an exercise unveiling of "what we should be and 
do" in society, these assignments are shown in the form of mandates, supported by 
discourses that are reinforced by our culture and are disseminated through language and 
socialization practices , "A woman is not born but becomes a woman" (as Simone De Beauvoir 
said in 1949).



The Theatre of the Oppressed is a system of physical exercises, aesthetic games, image 
techniques and improvisation,
where theater artistic media are built to serve a pedagogy of responsibility and autonomy.


SINTRACAP women as workers in private households, do not have higher education, most of 
them have only completed-hopefully-basic education and / or media in public establishments 
therefore have had to enter the working world exerting efforts domestic support for 
themselves and their families. Thus, they have faced a job by centuries of human history, 
has been based on logic employer and servile slavery, usually played by women. Domestic 
work, as mentioned earlier has been valued by nulamente not be associated directly to 
economic output, and this is reflected in the working conditions of these women, which are 
not given contracts to support their work and quality of life, not are entitled to decent 
health (not just the shortcomings of the public health system, but also for his extensive 
work day, especially for those who work indoors being their only day off on Sundays). In 
addition, their compensation is not equivalent to the amount of work and time they play, 
as there is no listing of a decent income for purposes of compensation AFP. To continue 
adding, domestic workers inside doors are not entitled to weekly rest (only on Sunday as 
mentioned above), they are not always respected his right to leave fifteen working days 
per year with full pay after serving one year of service , and last but no less serious, 
often mutes harassment and even sexual abuse by male employers towards them.

This practical work, public speaking workshop is planned to integrate the methodology of 
Theatre of the Oppressed, with the aim of transforming these relations of domination, 
allowing first leave to the oppressor that we carry in our consciences, even 
socio-historical heritage. This requires re-appropriate our voices, our bodies and our 
memories, our meanings and our identity. Thus, increasingly open fields of social 
transformation that involves overcoming the prevailing logic of domination and as 
experienced daily by women.

The Theatre of the Oppressed for the emancipation of women

The Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) is a system of physical exercises, aesthetic games, 
image techniques and improvisation, where theater artistic media are built to serve a 
pedagogy of responsibility and autonomy. Each subject is able to articulate essential 
proposals about their condition and their paths, wherein the subject TO helps to develop 
their proposals and give them a place to express them. One of the techniques of the OT is 
the Theater Image, which aims to raise awareness objective, discuss and analyze specific, 
detailed and clear, real problems of a particular situation and everything around him, all 
through bodily images the same participants. They also allow also clarify what you want to 
achieve, and eventually identify all steps for the transition and thus overcome those 
obstacles and prevent the release of that situation. Images are immediate and easy to 
invent words and, to some extent, richer in potential, more polysemous meanings, 
especially when you have a limited vocabulary, being easier to express thoughts in this way.

This technique is not only a tool of awareness of problems and solutions, but goes far 
beyond, to become a trial for life, and so they make us actors, aware of our present from 
our past, so jointly build a free, dignified and equitable future for everyone. The 
Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) allows using these theatrical exercises, SINTRACAP women are 
known, think of others and their relationship emerge in the process, potential solutions 
to everyday problems. The TO has a special potential as a tool for transformation and 
emancipation of women. We believe that the TO allows meaning to the language and identity 
of participants, fundamental tools in the process of emancipation, a process that first 
requires that, for women to visualize their position in the social structure and its 
subordinate position in women as workers and trade unionists, women become aware of what 
elements operating in their exclusion and segregation in access to education, the labor 
market and the political scene is, to finally empower themselves through reflection and 
control over the use of language and their bodies.

The intended result is a process of metacognition, where women are able to develop public 
speaking skills and body language, and where the ultimate goal is to enable and promote 
opportunities for dialogue, encounter and reflection among women, constant debate 
scenarios where women can generate speeches, autonomous and participatory.

The invitation is to continue integrating participatory methodologies in building a broad 
political horizon, put our skills and energies to serve the people and we contribute 
collectively to the emancipation of the oppressed and.