“Estendemos as mãos, unidas no mesmo ideal”? As mulheres fascistas no Brasil, em Portugal e na Espanha durante o período entreguerras

Abstract

This dissertation proposes a comparative analysis of women’s participation in fascist and fascistized movements and regimesin Brazil, Portugal, and Spain between the 1930s and 1940s, based on the activities of women linked to the Ação Integralista Brasileira (Brazilian Integralist Action, AIB), the Sección Femenina (Women’s Section), of the Falange Española, and the Mocidade Portuguesa Feminina (Portuguese Female Youth, MPF). The research investigates the construction of models of femininity associated with the authoritarian projects of the period, the forms of female political mobilization, the mechanisms of ideological pedagogy present in the press, and the transnational connections established among the movements studied. The dissertation examines how these organizations mobilized discourses on motherhood, domesticity, religiosity, social assistance, and nationalism as instruments for the political formation and social disciplining of women. To this end, it uses as its main corpus the periodicals Brasil Feminino, Y: Revista de la Mujer Nacional Sindicalista/Y: Revista para la Mujer, and Mocidade Portuguesa Feminina: Boletim Mensal, in addition to correspondence, institutional documents, propaganda materials, and reports consulted in archives and hemerotecas in Brazil, Portugal, and Spain. Based on a comparative and transnational methodology, articulated with gender studies and the conception of fascism as a political culture, the dissertation seeks to understand both the specificities and the similarities among the cases analyzed, considering national particularities as well as the circulation of models, symbols, and practices across different contexts. The study demonstrates that women’s participation was not restricted to a secondary or domestic role, but instead constituted a central element in the projects of mobilization and ideological nationalization promoted by the movements and regimes analyzed. It concludes that the women’s press functioned as an important instrument of political pedagogy and gender identity construction, contributing to the consolidation and transnational diffusion of fascist and fascistized political cultures throughout the twentieth century.