O gênero da nação: presenças e representações das mulheres na Independência do Brasil

Abstract

The construction of nations as imagined communities presupposes the selection of characters and fragments of reality from which ones construct national myths and heroes. How representative of the groups that make up the nation these representations are is an open question. Recognizing that official history and its reinterpretations reflect not only the state of research and historical sources but also power relations in society, inequalities of status and social class, gender, and race are bases for the recognition or invisibilization of diverse contributions in the formation of a nation.Women, especially when poor and racialized, tend to be invisibilized in the political history of countries marked by patriarchy and racism. Concerning the struggles for Brazilian Independence, the official version gradually absorbed discrete nuances of female participation, incorporated differently according to their unequal conditions, such as the contribution of Leopoldina, legitimate spouse, and empress, to the "shout of Ipiranga", as well as the role of a group of women who fought for the consolidation of Independence in Bahia, such as Maria Quitéria, Maria Felipa and Joana Angélica, which reflect the diverse condition of Brazilian women in the transition from Colony to Empire.Considering that politics is perhaps the space where few progress exist in the construction of gender equality in Brazil, this work aims to contribute to the analysis of how in the representation of Independence, visions of the limits and possibilities of female political participation in Brazil are reinvented or repeated.

Keywords

• gender
• Brazil
• women
• Independence
• political participation