Descortinando estudos em masculinidades : os caminhos da pesquisa em psicologia sobre homens no Brasil

Abstract

Psychology, as a field of knowledge, is called upon to understand processes of invisibility and subalternation of experiences, such as the masculinization process of men. Studies on masculinities and on men are contemporary and a result of feminist movements, and only from the 1990s on, have these discussions gained space in universities thus beginning to foment public policies based on gender asymmetries. Since academic productions are fundamental for the establishment of fields of knowledge and lines of research, based on the State-of-the-Art methodology, we conducted a meta-analysis of two studies based on data provided in the Catalog of Theses and Dissertations of the Coordination for the Improvement of Personnel of Higher Education (CAPES). By comparing and contrasting the results of researches on masculinity and on men produced by the Graduate Programs in Psychology from 1994 through 2018, we have obtained an overview of about whom, where and from which perspectives those studies are built. From the analysis of this scenario, it seems that studies on men in Psychology still recognize this term as representing a universal category that references the human being, and such studies are interested in thinking about the experience of being a man in everyday life, thus focusing their interests on micro-social aspects. Studies in masculinity, on the other hand, seem to focus on macro-social aspects such as the dimensions that build men in this culture. We also highlight the importance of introducing sociocultural criteria as filters in search indexing catalogs. This strategy makes it possible to understand who has been researching on a certain theoretical field and to dialogue more closely with the interlocutors in a research, helping to promote social inclusion, an evaluation criterion established by CAPES.