Abstract
OBJECTIVE: to understand the limits and the evaluative possibilities of the Family Health Strategy regarding the recognition of the health needs of women who experience violence. METHOD: a study with a qualitative approach, grounded in the perspective of gender, and which adopted health needs as the analytical category. The data were collected through interviews with health professionals and women who made use of a health service, and were analyzed using the method of discourse analysis. RESULTS: the meeting between the discourses of women who use the services and the professionals of the health service revealed, as the interface, human needs, as in the example of autonomy and of bonds. The understanding regarding the needs was limited to the recognition of health problems of physical and psychological natures, just as the predominance of the recognition of needs for maintaining life in the light of essentially human needs was revealed in the professionals' discourses as an important limitation of the practices. CONCLUSION: emphasis is placed on the perspective of gender as a tool which must be aggregated to the routine of the professional practices in health so as to confirm or deny the transformative character of the care in place regarding the recognition and confronting of the women's health needs.