Feminism and gender in the university: trajectories and tensions of activism

Abstract

The university studies have become, since the beginning of the eighties, a privileged place for those people who, since the sixties and especially in the seventies, were active in the several social movements that were formed in Brazil either to struggle against the dictatorship, for a socialist society or for feminism. Today the young militants of those years occupy positions in the government, NGOs and universities – mainly in the public ones. This generation transformed its experiences into an object of reflection. Today many subjects who were constituted in that experience of acting in leftist groups and in feminism take part, as founders or activists, in Women’s, Feminist or Gender Studies’ Centers. They think that their militancy isn’t over; on the contrary, they define themselves as militants of another space, in this case the academic one. Through oral statements and texts of that time I intend, in this text, to observe the trajectory of those people who looked for spaces of legitimation in the universities.

Key words: feminism, academy, militancy.