Em 2008, História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos publicou a edição Gênero e Ciências (v.15 supl.0), com discussões que continuam atuais. Confira o sumário:
- Carta dos Editores Convidados
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In the Analysis Section, three articles deal with the institutionalization of the sciences and scientific professionalization within the Brazilian context in its decisive era, situated more or less between the creation (late) of the university, in the 1930s, and the first great reform of the university system, at the end of the 1960s. This is not mere coincidence. One of the singular aspects (and least studied) of the ‘formation of the scientific community’ in Brazil is its insertion in the broad process of social and cultural changes that had as a consequence, among others, the restructuring of the gender system. It becomes transparent in the analysis of the role of Marina de Vasconcellos in the foundation of the Brazilian anthropological tradition, in the superimposition of the public image of Bertha Lutz, at once a militant feminist and a scientific professional, and in the dynamics of gender manifested in the scientific production of that period.
Two articles deal with higher education and professionalization. In the last thirty years, the scholastic supremacy of the young female population compared with the masculine contingent of the same age group, notably at the university instruction level, has generated new questions regarding the unequal distribution of power and prestige between the genders in the techno-scientific professions. Traditionally the approach to the presence of women in Brazilian higher education highlights the obstacles imposed to their access and/or their confinement to so-called feminine careers. Feminization of university instruction emerges as a phenomenon that eludes the paradigm of current analysis. How to explain it? By examining the formation and professionalization of female dentists in the first decades of the past century and the recent intensification of the presence of women in university instruction, these articles provide us with the means to understand the remote causes and immediate consequences of feminization.
The social construction of the sexes and genders founded on the production of scientific facts and representations is the subject of the remaining three articles. They endeavor to understand the distinction of the ‘natural history’ and ‘social history’ of bodies and behaviors according to the sex and gender attributed to them. To do so, the analysis of medical-scientific knowledge and practices serves as a fertile field of study. Sexuality, maternity and mental pathology – subjects of medicine situated on the border between ‘natural’ and ‘social’ – are explored, based on perspectives that point out the ‘hybrid’ and/or ‘relational’ character of the representations about the sexes and genders.
One article included points out a topic relatively unexplored: the representations of gender and the public image of science in the pages of pioneering publications popularizing science in Brazil. Only in the 19th century was science professionalized, with its activities no longer restricted to the ambiences of the courts or the invisible colleges of scientific academies. The public image of science became a relevant social problem. Indications of this are the emergence of science fiction as a literary genre, the cycle of universal expositions and the proliferation of publications directed to popularizing science and technology. All of these phenomena had impacts on the representations and social roles of gender.
The American science historian Londa Schiebinger also collaborates in this special number. She participated with us in the 1998 Latin American Congress of History of Science and Technology in Rio de Janeiro. Schiebinger is one of the main constructors in the field of research on feminine studies of gender in the history of science. Of her works, only Has feminism changed science?, which won various awards, has been translated in Brazil (O feminismo mudou a ciência?, Bauru, Edusc, 2001). In the Sources section, we make available to the lusophone public an essay in which Schiebinger examines, in the American context, theories and practices related to the search for equality for women in the sciences. The author analyzes the development of these discussions at three levels: the participation of women in science, gender in science cultures and gender in the scientific results. Based on her vast experience and studies conducted by the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, she emphasizes the last of these three aspects, showing how the analyses of gender, when directed to the sciences, can profoundly impact human knowledge.
In the Interview section, we present an interview with Leda Dau, a botanist with the Museu Nacional who, in addition to carrying out research and teaching activities, has assumed various positions in the academic hierarchy, including leadership of that hundred-year-old scientific institution. Her professional career, initiated in 1953, is illustrative of the conditions that enabled a scientific career for an expressive contingent of women, taking advantage of the professional strategies and models available at the time.
The current edition of História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos is the first one dedicated entirely to gender, women and science. Our intention in doing so is to attract other people interested in the subject, particularly historians of science, who can do much to contribute to the theoretical and methodological renovation of this field in Brazil by adopting the perspective of gender, a perspective that increases our critical awareness of the forms of being and knowing and of interpreting the past.
