A educação de elite e a profissionalização da mulher brasileira na Primeira República: discriminação ou emancipação?

Abstract

We intend to analyse the presence of women at the secondary and university schools during the First Republic, aiming at an understanding of the nature, possibilities and limitations of their profissionalization while members of the class of teachers. There is a consensus among the scholars that womans education is associated primarily to the start of womens schooling supported by the government. It is also agreed that the organization of the Normal Schools played a significant role in the professional development and cultural improvement of women. Our study has its course set: we plan to analyse the presence of women in the São Paulo secondary schools (of which there were there at the period) and follow (whenever possible) her professional career. Our aim, then, is to observe the participation of women in what is usually called elitist education, reserved only to men in the traditionally oligarchic and seigneurial Brazilian society. Whenever possible we also intend to examine the relationship between the studies accomplished and the chosen professional field, especially in respect tom the always present political discourse which relates womans condition to the role of mother and family unifier. In other words, the education of women as prerequisite for the education of the family.