BODIES THAT SUSTAIN THE CITY, TERRITORIES THAT DENY THEM: AN INTERSECTIONAL READING OF URBAN INEQUALITIES IN BRAZIL

Abstract

This article investigates the spatial production of inequalities in Brazil through the intersection of gender, race, class, and territory, focusing on the body-territories of Black women heads of household. Grounded in situated feminist epistemologies and the concept of body-territory, the study seeks to understand how structural inequalities are distributed and materialized across Brazilian urban space. Methodologically, it adopts a quantitative approach based on data from the 2022 Brazilian Census conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), combining variables related to the sex and race of the household head with indicators of access to urban infrastructure. Through the construction of proportional indicators and their spatialization at the municipal scale, patterns of concentrated vulnerability are identified, particularly in the North and Northeast regions. The results show that households headed by Black and Brown women are more exposed to precarious conditions of access to basic services, revealing the overlapping of social and territorial inequalities. It is concluded that such patterns are not random, but rather the expression of historical and structural processes that articulate racism, patriarchy, and regional inequality. The article contributes by demonstrating how spatial analysis, when guided by an intersectional and situated perspective, enables not only the description but also the critical examination of the unequal production of territory.