Gender, public policy and medical knowledge on the pages of Mulherio feminist journal (1981–1988)

Abstract

In 1981 a group of health workers and feminist researchers created a journal that aimed to discuss the agendas of women's movements and expose practices of prevention and prophylaxis of women's health. Many of its organizers came from left-wing parties andused their knowledge and repertoires to defend gender equity and the end of discrimination, bringing research and scientific work to the discussion. With that in mind, this article aims to analyze how the researchers who wrote the feminist journal Mulherio(1981–1988) used their sociocultural and scientific repertoires to address the female body and health. Methodologically, it operates with the analysis of discourse from Michel Foucault, which makes it possible to read the images and texts in their historicity, plurality and tensions that were constitutive of them, contributing to the constitution of subjects and practices of power-knowledge. Considering, therefore, the analysis of a periodical that had considerable circulation, it can be seen as a product of specific aspirations, reproducing or questioning certain scientific premises and socially constituted values articulated to the ongoing transformations in gender relations.