“E naquela época, não sei porque, se era mulher tinha que ser normal”: histórias de vida de mulheres professoras, em Pelotas-RS (1950 a 1970)

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the representations of the life stories of women who started their careers as primary teachers between the years 1950 to 1970, in the city of Pelotas. The work is part of the field of studies of New Cultural History, seeking to understand the way in which reality was perceived and appropriated by the subjects and, specifically, in the field of studies of Women's History from the perspective of gender as a category of analysis. The Pelotas society of the period studied was structured by patriarchal gender relations from which the social roles of men and women were determined and reinforced by various institutions. The teaching profession was one of the most sought after careers by young women at the time, due to normative gender discourses, encouraging young women to follow this career considered more appropriate for linking educational practice with motherhood. Oral history was the methodological procedure used, in the form of oral history of life, through which eleven women were interviewed. We analyzed the perception and appropriation of gender normativity in the life history of women who pursued the prescribed profession according to the hegemonic model of femininity at the time, as well as the possibilities of ruptures with the norm. From the constructed narratives, three sets of historical representations of women teachers were found, called traditional, intermediate and progressive. Different meanings of the insertion in the professional career of primary teaching were found in the lives of white and black women inserted in a context of social transformations of a patriarchal society.