Mulheres rumo à docência: trajetórias de normalistas em Ouro Preto – MG (1871-1930)

Abstract

This Thesis analyzes the trajectory of 68 normalists, seeking to understand how the construction of teaching took place for the girls who graduated by the Escola Normal de Ouro Preto (ENOP), Minas Gerais, in the period between 1877 and 1889. The time frame of the research extends from the year 1871, when ENOP is reinstated in its third phase of operation, until 1930, when the last normalists who graduated in the studied period retired from teaching. The work dialogues with discussions about the history of women and feminization of teaching in Brazil, as well as studies on life trajectories, the concept of gender being central to the analysis. Methodologically, the perspective of onomastic analysis was used, at the crossroads of several sources: records produced within ENOP, such as minutes, registration books, correspondence, certificates, assessments, exams; public administration documents, such as teacher registration books, lists, correspondence and reports of the presidents of the province of Minas Gerais in the Provincial Legislative Assembly; notarial documents such as inventories, wills, and ecclesiastical documents, such as baptism, marriage and death records. Also consulted were newspapers from the provinces of Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, as well as magazines and almanacs; mining educational legislation and census data. Analyzing the theme from the perspective of trajectories, this research empirically demonstrates and confirms some assumptions of the field, resizing others. It was found that ENOP, between the 1870s and 1880s, formed a diverse group of normalists, the majority of whom were from the city of Ouro Preto and nearby locations, and belonging to the middle social strata linked to the civil service in Minas Gerais. The number of girls trained was greater than men, which accompanied the greater number of enrollments of them than boys over the period studied, demonstrating that the abandonment of men by the profession took place before joining it and not after. It was found that most graduates and, above all, graduates worked in teaching at least at some point in their lives, and among women, this rate was 93%. It was also observed that these students taught, predominantly, in public teaching in Minas Gerais. Among gender distinctions, the biggest and quickest career advancement for them stands out than for them and a relative incidence of women who reconciled marriage and motherhood with teaching. The graduates who reached prominent positions did so after at least two decades of teaching, already in the context of school groups, when they became principals. Finally, it was found that these normalists faced a series of struggles, challenges and resistances of different orders, in a context of transition of the profession, which stopped being composed almost exclusively by men, to be assumed mainly by women.