The Braça, the Right Liter of Oil, and the Well-Measured:

Rural Women and Measuring Practices

Abstract

This article discusses how rural women relate to practices that involve measuring, recording, operating or communicating measures and challenge the values that hegemonic mathematics associates with measuring procedures and expressions. To support this discussion, we resorted to the empirical data of three studies developed by undergraduates in the Rural Education Teaching Degree, which focused on women from different communities in the countryside of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil: four Indaiá coconut straw braiders from Morro do Pilar; two Pequi oil producers in Rio Pardo de Minas; and a vendor at the Itaobim Street Fair. In the description of these women's activities, we can identify the mobilization of references to measurement systems and expressions, marked by both the rural cultural context and the demands of the communities. Therefore, this mobilization confronts values associated with school measurement systems: the standardization of units and the precision of measurement expressions. Our analysis is supported by studies on numeracy practices appropriation, which highlight the discursive nature of mathematical practices. The results point out how meeting pragmatic needs and cultural values challenge the illusion of universality and neutrality of mathematical practices. Furthermore, they reiterate the need to consider in the school approach the pragmatic dimension of these practices and the cultural character of values associated with them.