On the eve of International Women's Day, March 8, the Edgar Leuenroth Archive (AEL) at Unicamp receives the collection from the Women's Information Center (CIM), one of the largest archives on the feminist movement in the country. The collection adds to the vast documentation on Brazilian social movements safeguarded in the AEL. Magazines, newspapers, books, posters and photographs that portray more than four decades of activity by the women's movement make up the materials that will be available for consultation.
“This collection will greatly enrich what we already have at Unicamp, in particular what we have in the Elizabeth Souza Lobo do Pagu library, at IFCH [Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences]. And also the collections of the newspaper Mulherio, Patrícia Galvão (Pagu), Moleca [Movimento Lésbico de Campinas], GALF (Grupo de Ação Lésbica Feminista), Coletivo Feminista de Campinas, Cacilda Lanuza, Geledés among other collections that are in the AEL. CIM has served different research purposes over the decades. It is a collection of memories of the Brazilian and international feminist struggle that we are having the privilege of receiving at Unicamp, thanks to the trust of the CIM management”, says the director of AEL, professor Mário Medeiros.
The collection arrived at Unicamp this Monday (6) and will undergo the cleaning and cataloging process. Negotiations for this began in 2019, through the AEL management team composed of professors Aldair Rodrigues and Mário Medeiros.
The arrival of the collection occurred with the support of professors Andreia Galvão and Michel Nicolau, both heading the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences at Unicamp (IFCH), professor Silvana de Souza Nascimento, from USP, and arrived at Unicamp through the intermediation of two students from the Postgraduate Program in Sociology: Iasmim Vieira (supervised by professor Bárbara Castro) and Milene Marques (supervised by professor Mário Medeiros). Both used CIM documents in their research.
Medeiros highlights that, in this collection, there are around 5 thousand book titles, covering themes such as Law, Philosophy and Feminist Literature. The agreement with CIM provides for the digitization of documents. This way, researchers will have remote access to the file. “We will help give visibility to this material that has been preserved by the CIM since 1981”, says the professor.
Listen to an article produced by Rádio Unicamp:
The protagonism of women
It was in search of documentation about Sueli Carneiro that Marques, at the time a master's student in Sociology, arrived at CIM. “The CIM material was definitive for my dissertation, it brought another strength and qualified my research. The importance that this archive has for the women's movement is immeasurable because it is an extraordinary memory of many people who built what we call feminism today. We cannot move forward without knowing the past and the CIM brings a past of feminism that few researchers have access to”, observes the sociologist.
For the researcher, the archive contributes to recovering the memory of women's protagonism. In the case of black women, she analyzes, there was an attempt to erase this history, but in the archive it is possible to recover their prominent role in the fight for rights. “Black women have always been building feminism in Brazil, but there was a narrative problem because those who told this story were often women from specific social places”, she analyzes.
Iasmim Vieira, a doctoral student in Sociology, also studies the topic of gender, analyzing the demarcations of differences between women organized in feminism in Latin America. She also reflects on the importance of the collection for the preservation of memory.
“Historical awareness is extremely important and it is through these collections that we are able to access it. It is in these records that we understand the entire production of feminist knowledge accumulated throughout history and that we are able today to establish our agendas for struggle, look at our social reality and try to understand it”, he points out.
Of the materials, Vieira highlights the correspondences between women. “I saw records of feminist memory in what is most common and simple. This was done thanks to Miriam Botassi [founder of CIM]. We found letters exchanged between women who were organizing events, we found pamphlets, images and posters. In this collection we have a diamond in which we can look at the history of women in what is most everyday.”
Women's Information Center
The CIM was created in 1979 by Miriam Botassi, Rosa Beatriz Gouvea and Sônia Cairó and officially founded in 1981. The entity has one of the main collections on the history of the women's movement in Brazil and abroad and carries out various activities, such as workshops, seminars , soirées and facilities.
Marta Baião has been the director of the CIM since 2002. “The CIM emerged to repair the epistemicide in relation to the majority of the population, 52% made up of women, in addition to detailing the contemporary history of the lives and struggles of women in Latin America and the world” , points out.
She says that the entity, located in São Paulo (SP), was the location of preparatory meetings for March 8th for years. Actress and photographer, Baião highlights, among the thousands of materials in the collection, the iconographic documentation. There are photographs and posters that portray historical moments of the women's movement.
“Preserved with a lot of struggle,” she says, referring to the efforts of the women who worked on the collection for more than four decades. The partnership to bring documentation to AEL, he indicates, helps to repair the Academy's history of exclusion and indifference towards women's history. “There was a ban on women's access to the construction of knowledge, the absence of writing a history of humanity that talks about women. There is a rush to repair and this partnership is a way of repairing the Academy.”
International Women's Day
International Women's Day originated with a protest by working women demanding better working conditions and the right to vote in 1908 in New York. It also alludes to a women's strike in Russia in 1917, on the eve of the Russian Revolution, when women asked for “bread and peace”, the country's exit from the First World War and better living conditions.
Although celebrated since the beginning of the 1975th century, the day was only made official in XNUMX by the United Nations (UN). The date refers to women's achievements and struggles for rights. The challenges, according to the CIM coordinator, are still immense.
“Misogyny has prevailed in recent years and today we see that it is necessary to redo a series of policies, laws and spaces that we had conquered. The further we advance, the more patriarchy becomes more rigid and updated to attack our ideas of liberation and contestation. He will not give up his spaces, his privileges [...]. But we feminists don’t let our guard down.”
Events at Unicamp
At Unicamp, the date will be marked by several events. The conversation "Gender, Equity and Diversity in Universities and Institutes” takes place in the Executive Directorate of Human Rights (DeDH). Representatives from public education institutions in São Paulo will discuss the creation of the Equity Network, with the aim of developing a Gender Equity Policy.
In the auditorium of the GGBS (Social Benefits Management Group), there will be a performance by Companhia Teatro no Solo. Between March 8th and 10th, the First Meeting of Indigenous Women at Unicamp will also take place.
