Cooperative: A Female Experience in the Art of Producing Success

Abstract

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.