Entre mitos e interditos: Uma reflexão sobre a segregação feminina na Matemática

Abstract

Throughout history, the presence of women in some areas of knowledge has been questioned, censored or forgotten. There is a low female presence in the historical construction of mathematics. There are several factors that contributed to this issue, among them are the cultural factors. Several myths have been constructed over the years about women's relationship with mathematics. Myths that reach the ears of children from an early age, in the family, in schools, media and in society in general, having a detrimental effect on the formation and differentiation of sexual roles in society, thus shaping attitudes towards mathematics, which will impact on your career choices and your performance. In order to analyze possible reasons for female segregation in mathematics, this work is developed in two distinct moments. In the first moment, the conception of five graduating students of the Mathematics Degree course on the female participation in this area is analyzed, through the audio recording of a class of the teaching internship discipline. Subsequently, there is a reflection on the myths and Procedures of Prohibited Exclusion in relation to women and mathematics, based on the concept of Foucault (1971), with data collected in a questionnaire applied to high school graduates. This research is characterized as qualitative and its data suggest that there is female discomfort in working in the field of mathematical teaching, as they report that there are still many challenges to be overcome in this area. The female gender is not encouraged to choose courses aimed at calculations, mainly taking refuge in the Prohibited Exclusion Procedures for such abuses to generate and feed certain myths. The discourses concerning this context that reign in society were molding to the point of finding, only between the lines, statements based on the Prohibited Exclusion, in a discriminatory way.