O movimento feminista brasileiro na luta pelo direito à saúde: resgate histórico das décadas de 1970 e 1980

Abstract

This undergraduate thesis aims to analyze the role of the Brazilian feminist movement during the 1970s and 1980s and its contributions to the construction of public health policies in Brazil. Based on the analytical categories of historical-dialectical materialism, on bibliographic and documentary research, it was possible to understand that the feminist movement played a central role in challenging the hegemonic biomedical model and in broadening the concept of health, by denouncing the medicalization of women’s bodies, the centrality of the maternal-child approach, and the instrumentalization of reproduction in state policies. It is observed that, by intervening in the Brazilian Health Reform process, feminists problematized the limits of an abstract universalization of the right to health, highlighting the need to confront structural inequalities of gender, race, and class for the effective realization of this right. In this context, the formulation of the Program for Comprehensive Women’s Health Care (PAISM) represents a historical turning point by shifting women’s health from the sphere of reproductive tutelage to the sphere of social rights, although marked by contradictions imposed by capitalist sociability. Finally, the study demonstrates that achievements in the field of women’s health are the result of concrete social struggles and remain permanently under tension, making it essential to recognize the protagonism of the feminist movement in the consolidation of the Unified Health System (SUS) and in the strengthening of critical professional practices in Social Work.