Abstract

SILVA, Alice Inês de Oliveira e. A pedagogia do feminino: análise de um ritual de apresentação da menina à sociedade. Cad. Pesqui. [online]. 1985, n.54, pp.26-36. ISSN 0100-1574.

This paper is part of a research on the social construction of housewives, refered to as the elite of a small town in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. It focus on rituals such as the Crowning of Our Lady or the Debutantes' Ball, which characterize the young girl's passage from the restricted sphere of the family circle to that of her peer group. Such rituals constitute privileged spaces which makes evident the manipulation of status signs, the symbolic capital and the family involvement in that process. Although both rituals, as such, are based on symbols associating purity to the feminine ideal, the discussion aims to show that this is not the core of the question. More than the ritualization of the control of feminine sexuality, it is through participation in such rituals that a young girl will acquire the competence of managing the family symbolic capital. This fact, not the representation of feminine gender role, is responsible for the maintenance of such apparently anachronistic events.

Keywords : Mulheres; Sociedade; Sexualidade; Famílias; Religião; Discriminação social.

        · abstract in Portuguese     · text in Portuguese     · Portuguese ( pdf )