Women’s leading role in the political struggle for leisure: an ethnographic study in Porto Alegre, Brazil

ABSTRACT Porto Alegre became a pioneer city in public leisure services in 1926. Since then, leisure has gained weight as a matter of ‘social interest’ and ‘public interest’, which materialised in the interventionist stance of the City, when it created the Municipal Department of Sports, Recreation and Leisure (MDS) in 1993. However, the administration that took office in 2017 suppressed that ‘public interest’ character and eventually closed the Department. The political-administrative procedure lasted seven months, and a collective protest emerged from it/in it to defend the Department, led by women from different neighbourhoods who enjoyed leisure activities. Mostly elderly, they started to fight for their right to leisure. This study, based on pragmatic sociology, looked into these women’s struggle to maintain that Department. We conducted ethnographic research in which we participated in their collective action, especially in identifying and taking advantage of political opportunities to guarantee leisure as a social right. Ten interviews were conducted with female leaders of that action, showing that the leisure activities offered by the Department were important for the lives of these women and their ageing processes, and that their political role in defending the Department exposed inequalities in access to leisure.