Expulsas do paraíso : os direitos humanos das mulheres na história

Abstract

To write women's history under any aspect is an unattainable pretension, since their experience would never fit in books, even less in master's thesis, precisely because women's pain overflows and resonates, marking their time with iron, blood, fire, sweat, and tears, impossible to reproduce in a trustworthy way. In this work, we intend to elaborate a kind of critical "walk" through all historical periods, including pre-history, listing the beliefs, myths, customs, characters, stereotypes and cultures that almost always consecrated to the feminine a unique space, very different from the space destined to the masculine: smaller, less important, dangerous, violent, subservient, private and unequal. In simple and accessible language, we have opted to bring light to the darkness of the feminine roles of all times, in the hopes of contributing to broad information and dissemination to society, seeking to bring academic productions closer to the population, in the hopes of improving their social function. Although suggestions and some conclusions are presented at the end of the work, it does not aim to give answers, because the text is intended to provide information about the female path and its divergence from the male path throughout time, in order to understand the historical origin of the degradation and violation of women's human rights, enabling a critical and reflective analysis. For many centuries turned to the silence of reproduction and domestic invisibility, women were not masters of their destiny, nor protagonists of their existence, although it is unquestionable that the world has always revolved around them, even if their wishes were ignored. There is a Hebrew saying of unknown authorship which states that God counts women's tears: "Be careful when you make a woman cry, for God counts her tears. Nevertheless, since the beginning of human records, after prehistory, the masculine has imposed the rules to be obeyed. Until the 19th century, history was primarily told by men. Confined in the private space, women were described and narrated according to the male gaze that governed them, until they conquered, through constant battles, the right to desire and to divulge their words, guaranteeing their spaces of speech. As of the Contemporary Age, with the emergence of feminism as a social, cultural, philosophical, and political movement, many women start a declared war against machismo, violence, and misogyny, systematically organizing their struggles for the rights to exist as human beings, capable of proclaiming and having their wills respected, making clear their interest in being heard in the public space, opening ways to register the conquests that, until then, had been little shown outside the image that men had created for them. Driven by conquests denied and desired in the same proportion, under lashes, abuses, controls, and tyrannies, women suffer, but are affronted; they cry, but are glad; they die, but are reborn, in the battle of every day for a better fate than those imposed on their ancestors. There is still a long way to go, but they have never been closer to the rights that have always been denied them. The present work seeks to make an overview of all the barbarism imposed on women, together with the records of their resistance and battles for survival, empowerment, visibility, and equality, aiming at the realization of human rights, highlighting the roots of the violation and inequality that have transformed women of all social classes, races, ethnicities, levels of education, and cultures into dramatic statistical numbers, which are still unmanageable today.