Entre o rosa e o azul: um estudo em representações sociais de ser homem e de ser mulher

Abstract

Considering that gender-related aspects are of central importance in personal life, in the establishment of social relations and culture in a society, the present research proposed to develop a psychosocial study based on the Theory of Social Representations and sought to: identify the structure of social representations of being a man and being a woman in 160 college students between 18 and 60 years old, as well as the elements that compose it; and finally, make a comparative analysis in order to observe if there are changes in the students' representations by the age criterion. Thus, the subjects were divided into two groups: group 1, which refers to students from 18 to 29 years old, and group 2, which refers to students from 30 to 60 years old. For this, the methodological choice followed the proposals of the structural approach of the social representations of Abric (1994), which conceives the existence of two systems: the central one, responsible for generating all the representational signification, and the peripheral one, which organizes hierarchically the elements of representation. The research is of a quanti-quali nature, its data collection instrument was composed of a sociodemographic questionnaire, free evocation tasks, and open and closed questions about the roles and behaviors associated with men and women. The questionnaire was generated by Google Forms and applied online through sharing on social networks. The results showed the importance of talking about the categorizations imposed on gender since they produce a series of prejudices, inequalities, and reflect the Brazilian patriarchal structure.