(In)visibilidade das mulheres brasileiras nos livros didáticos de história do Ensino Médio (PNLD, 2015)

Abstract

The research analyzes the representations of Brazilian women in the history textbooks, used in public high school in Brazil. The books analyzed are part of collections examined and approved by the Ministry of Education (MEC), through the National Textbook Program (PNLD). All copies are part of the latest version of the program for the school subject of History, called PNLD 2015. It is understood that textbooks are social components, products of history, from the past, and breeders and producers of society's values in the historical moment in which they are formulated. Also, builders of a future. Thereby they have relevant functions - referential function, instrumental function, ideological function and documentary function (CHOPPIN, 2004). They are the instruments most commonly used in the classroom for teaching (PENTEADO, 2010), and are a source of study and updating for teachers (MONTEIRO, 2009). For these reasons, we are interested in researching their significance from the perspective of Gender theories. Analyzing how the Brazilian women - with a time frame focused on Brazilian contemporary history, from the nineteenth century - has been represented in these books, their visibility and invisibility. Analyzing for example, how they are addressed in primary and secondary texts, local in distribution of content where they appear and their reproduced images. Because they're vehicle of values, ideologies, of a culture (BITTENCOURT, 2011), the approach through Gender and History of Women is necessary to think of the role of education, specifically the discipline of history in building a more equal society for women in Brazil. The theoretical framework is interdisciplinary: composed by authors of Gender, analyzing their reproductions in and out of the classroom, Education and History. It can be seen that there was a recognition of the History of Women in these textbooks, but also there was a relegation to a separate domain. In the books analyzed, the story has a pattern: is white, is about men, is heteronormative and upper classes whatever the season. What flee these characteristics briefly enters the great historical narrative.