The way poor women, who live in a given reality, perceive institutional policies of the health sector and face them is the object of reflection presented in this study. As category of analysis, the authors make use of social representation, understood as share of the contradictory social relations and of the individual and colletctive history of the groups, Authors discuss the inequities in public health care, focussing the way popular segments reaffirm and deny dominant knowledge and practices. Their speech about in the health attencion showed, at the same time, absorption/reproduction of the rules spreaded by "oficial" medical system and the incorporation/ translation of their necessities, experiences and specifics interests.
Health polices; Social representations; Public health attention