Gênero e feminismo para cristãos capixabas: um estudo de representações sociais

Abstract

The gender thematic has been a widely discussed phenomenon in several studies in humanities and social sciences areas over the past few years and, recently, its debate has increased in social media and networks in Brazilian scenario, reaching more directly the daily routine. Whereas it is a modern theme, directly related to the cultural, political, economic, and social contexts, the notion of gender can present a diversity of meanings in the most different places/contexts. In spite of this, it is possible to identify the predominance of a more traditional view about this subject among different groups, as in the case of religious groups which, in general, have very clearly defined what is proper for men and for women. The present research had, as general objective, to investigate the social representations (SR) of gender and feminism to catholic and protestant Christians (of different denominations) who reside in the metropolitan region of Grande Vitória, Espírito Santo. For this purpose, two complementary researches were made. The first research, which aimed to identify gender SR content for practicing Christians and to verify if the meanings and attitudes towards male and female social roles vary according to the religion, age group and sex, was realized with 257 participants, of both sexes, who answered a structured questionnaire with assertions about gender characteristics, attributions and roles. The data were organized and submitted to descriptive exploratory statistical analysis drawing on the SPSS software. In general, it was identified that there are still some traits more strongly associated with women - such as emotionalism and care - and others more attributed to men - such as leadership and aggressiveness. The results also pointed out possible progresses related to the place of men and women in the family environment and in the public sphere (work and church). Despite these progresses, some ‘resistances’ were also evidenced, which seems to indicate that, among the participants, there is a coexistence between more modern notions and some more traditional ones. The second research was composed by the execution of two semi-structured interviews with 23 participants who act as leaders in Christian churches/communities, and aimed to investigate how these individuals have been understing and experiencing points related to gender and feminism, and to verify how the social representations production of such topics takes place. The script exploited questions about personal data, meanings of gender and feminism, the perspective of these points in the religious entourage and in other belonging groups, and more. The interviewing data were organized into two corpora, splitted according to the objects (gender and feminism), in order to achieve a more meticulous analysis of each of them, and for this purpose it was utilized the Descending Hierarchical Classification (DHC) and Correspondence Factorial Analysis (CFA), with the aid of the IRaMuTeQ software. The corpus about gender has resulted in 5 classes and the corpus about feminism has originated 6 classes. Regarding gender SR, the results showed that the understandings about being a man and being a woman are shown as anchored in familiar/traditional roles and aspects of an assumed female and male "nature"; furthermore, they highlighted the appropriations and controversies that revolve around the thematic of gender in general, and other more specific ones, such as the issue about “gender ideology”. Concerning the SR of feminism, the results indicate that, for the construction of the representational field, the participants have anchored their significations in movements that seek for social changes, whether these are evaluated positively (such as equal paying for men and women) or negatively (such as equality between men and women in 'all' senses), and they aim the feminism at imagery elements such as the de-characterization of women, destruction of family, amongst others. It should also be emphasized that subgroups composed by classes not only formed semantic categories, but also highlighted marks of representational activity, and that way, it was proposed as an explanatory hypothesis that this distinction happened because of the participants' speech about the objects of the research resort simultaneously to both of the thinking systems proposed by Moscovici. Thus, the “state of cognitive polyphasia” was evidenced in this research, confirming other recent investigations that focused on this concept. Finally, the articulation of the researches took place considering two axes of discussion: one about the progresses that were indentified and the other about the resistance to changes regarding the issues of gender and feminism. It is expected that the findings of this master’s dissertation will contribute to the understanding of how social gender roles and the thematic of feminism have been understood by Christian religious, and to some extent, that they also provide indications about how such issues have been understood in the Brazilian current scenario in a broad way.