A questão feminina no PCB (1925-1956) : as mulheres na cultura política comunista

Abstract

This thesis aims to analyze how the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) led the debate on the female issue and the organization of political work among women in the period between 1925 and 1956. To this end, the theoretical-methodological perspective of the Cultural History of Politics was adopted. Since its founding the PCB sought to tackle inequalities between men and women and organized specific female mobilization fronts, even because this was effectively an orientation established by the international communist movement. In fact, the communist political culture that was structured between 1903 and 1930 around the Bolshevik group was shaped by the certainty that female oppression was one of the problems resulting from the emergence of private property, a condition that would be aggravated in the capitalist context. Assuming that the situation of intellectual and political inferiority of most women would be a social construction and not a biological fatality, the communists pledged to fight for the transformation of alienated women (babas) into true revolutionaries. In Brazil, women activists who took on the leadership of several entities stood out in conducting women's political work. These include the Comitê de Muheres Trabalhadoras (1928-1933), the União Feminina do Brasil (1935), the newspaper O Momento Feminino: um jornal para o seu lar (1947-1956), the Federação de Mulheres do Brasil (1949-1964), in addition to several sections of journals and other local and state women's entities. Although always outnumbered, women activists took on important positions in the party and led the projects of women's mass organizations. The female communists sought to associate the struggle for the specific demands they identified with poor and working women with the general agendas that mobilized the entire PCB and, thus, ensured that female political work was not only important for the construction of women's movements between 1920 and 1950, as well as for the vitality and success of several of the PCB's actions.