O debate sobre direitos reprodutivos no mulherio (1981-1988): a luta das mulheres por políticas de planejamento familiar e pela legalização do aborto no contexto da transição democrática brasileira.

Abstract

The theme of this master's thesis is women's struggle for reproductive rights in Brazil throughout the 1980s, a time when the so-called democratic transition occurred. The objective is to study the way in which feminists from the newspaper Mulherio (1981-1988) promoted the debate on issues historically linked to the fight for reproductive rights. The time frame of the research corresponds to the newspaper's duration, from 1981 to 1988. During the research process, we analyzed the insertion of this production in the trajectory of the Brazilian feminist press produced in the last decades of the 20th century. We were thus able to understand the type of feminism defended by the women who wrote in this publication, the themes covered in its pages and the complex relationship established between it and its funders, in particular, with the Ford Foundation (FF). Through data prepared from our analyses, we also studied the presence of themes associated with reproduction in the newspaper's editions, highlighting the most covered topics and the social position of the authors of the articles. The analysis allowed us to identify the limitations of an ethnic-racial and class perspective in the articles produced. Finally, we analyze, particularly, Mulherio's approach to the fight for family planning policies and the legalization of abortion. This feat allowed us to rescue the protagonism of women in the context of redemocratization, highlighting the tensions within the Brazilian feminist movement. Furthermore, we were able to show that feminist agendas also formed part of the different social democratization projects that divided the scenario at that moment in Brazil's history. The methodology used in the research was newspaper analysis and our theoretical basis is based on authors such as Angela Davis (2016), Nancy Fraser (2009), Silvia Federici (2017, 2019) and Bárbara Machado (2020). In their own way, they dialogue with the Marxist tradition and understand the dynamics between gender, race and class in a relational and non-hierarchical way.