Mulheres e educação : o protagonismo da educadora Eunice Caldas e a fundação do Liceu Feminino Santista

Abstract

This dissertation aims to investigate the trajectory and protagonism of Eunice Caldas, considering her contributions to the development of education and the process of feminization of the teaching profession in the city of Santos, especially through the founding of the Liceu Feminino Santista. In the Western world, women have been destined for a condition of submission and inferiority in relation to men for a long time. Considered fragile, they only performed domestic duties related to household chores and raising children, thus remaining completely submissive to their husband or father. For a long time, they did not have the right to access education and when allowed, it was allocated unequally to daughters of high society families. Without knowledge, women were not able to participate in public life, they were kept within the limits imposed by patriarchy, being absent from effective participation in society. Faced with this power relationship of male authority and female submission, a patriarchal society strategy of keeping women away from learning and professionalization is revealed, aiming to maintain domination. This study has as its temporal reference the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century and the elaboration of the problem-theme is the following question: how did the trajectory and protagonism of Eunice Caldas, as a woman and educator inserted in the context of contradictions and meanings of the process of feminization of the teaching profession, contributed to the founding of the Liceu Feminino Santista? Many gaps permeate the trajectory of this educator, this study could be justified by the fusion of the history of Santos with the history of education. Eunice was an active young woman with an entrepreneurial spirit who, at the age of twenty-three, began founding the first secondary school with the aim of training teachers specializing in early childhood education. The methodology used in this research is documentary history and was supported by the documentary collection of the Liceu Feminino Santista (writings, documents by Eunice Caldas, regulations, yearbooks, statutes and photos), the Historical and Geographical Institute of Santos, the Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira and the Histedbr Magazine (yearbooks, albums, regulations, photos and periodicals that circulated at the time), from the works of pedagogues and historians of Brazilian education (Amarílio Ferreira Júnior, Boris Fausto, Demerval Saviani, José Gondra, Mary Del Priore and Luciano Mendes Faria Filho); on the teaching profession (António Nóvoa, Jane Soares de Almeida and Michael Apple); of gender and education studies (Guacira Lopes Louro, Susan Besse, Maria Clementina Pereira Cunha and Claudia Pereira Vianna).