Dossier Women's History: gender and sexuality studies in the sertões

The Dossier, organized by Joana Maria Pedro (UFSC), Emmanuela Harakassara (UFSC), Allana Letícia dos Santos (UFSC) and Renata Cavazzana (Seduc-SP), aims to bring together articles on the field of Women's History, incorporating gender and sexuality studies in the hinterlands.

In the debate in question, the Brazilian hinterlands take center stage, becoming the central context for exploring the experiences, challenges and subjects related to the history of women, genders and sexualities. In this sense, the sertões are not merely geographical locations, but a condition that highlights various forms of power, prejudice, violence and gender inequalities

Women's History, as a field of scientific research, emerged in Brazil from the 1960s onwards, at a time when feminist movements were booming in the country. In this context, the incorporation of categories such as "woman" and "women" into academic research, one of the political-epistemological effects of feminism, led to a renewal in Brazilian historiography, bringing with it the first research in the field of sexuality (Pedro; Veras, 2014). Demonstrating the partiality of historical knowledge, the field has produced political and theoretical provocations for the discipline of history, demanding a review of sources, methods, approaches and the knowledge produced.

With the emergence of the concept of gender in the 1980s, these questions took on a new impetus and demanded the expansion of the field of Women's History. As a relational category of analysis, "gender" began to gain space and visibility, renewing the view of subjects in history, now taking power relations into account. In this way, research on women, previously silenced in academic and editorial circles, has gained more space. "Gender" has often been used as a transversal category in Brazilian historiography, so that it has challenged not only Women's History, but also History as a science (Crescêncio; Ferreira, 2021).