Women with Knives in Their Boots: How Brazil’s Gaúchas Turn ‘Machismo’ to Their Advantage

ABSTRACT This article poses the question of whether a ‘Culture of Equality’ might emerge through a progression of moves which bring greater equality to existing structures of gender inequality, or if something altogether more radical is necessary? Considering machismo in the south of Brazil, it moves beyond an analysis of women’s resistance to machismo and towards a focus on the ways in which women use machismo productively, even turning it to their advantage. In this formulation machismo becomes a productive site within which women who understand the rules of this folk model of patriarchy are able to not only play its games successfully, but also construct their own gendered, and in their view ‘modern’, lives. This however leaves us with the unanswered question of whether this is sufficient, or just a beginning?