Crack cocaine users living on the streets - gender characteristics.

The increase in the use of crack cocaine constitutes a challenge to public health in Brazil. The objectives of this article are to identify how gender relations are constituted in the daily lives of crack users, and to analyze the dynamics that permeate the construction of these relationships involving exchange and power. This is a qualitative, descriptive, exploratory study of phenomenological orientation. The data was collected from crack users living on the streets in the Manguinhos community in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Eight focus groups (n = 31) were conducted and there were two individual interviews between June and August 2011. In the groups, the reports of the young men and women differed in terms of the establishment of bonds of affection; in the role attributed to crack as an operator in conflict mediation; in the use of the body as exchange/prostitution; and in the generation and care of offspring. Some shifts were observed with respect to traditional and hierarchical arrangements of gender. The study of the relationships established in this research reveals that it is not possible to point to simply perpetrators or victims. What emerges in the analysis is a plural and fluid universe, which is in permanent construction, with shifts that sometimes favor women and sometimes favor men.