Políticas públicas, educação escolar e violência contra as mulheres: entre a naturalização e a problematização na perspectiva da psicologia histórico-cultural

Abstract

Violence against women is a historical and social phenomenon produced within capitalist and patriarchal relations and naturalized through educational processes that, from childhood onward, assign different roles, behaviors, and possibilities to girls and boys. Accordingly, this study addresses the following research question: from the perspective of Cultural-Historical Psychology (CHP), what role do school education and Brazilian public policies play in the processes of constitution, naturalization, and problematization of violence against women? The general objective was to analyze, from the perspective of CHP, the role of school education, in conjunction with Brazilian public policies, in these processes. To achieve this objective, the following specific objectives were established: a) to understand the cultural-historical constitution of women, emphasizing gender relations and the processes of development and learning throughout childhood and adolescence; b) to examine Brazilian public policies and legislation enacted since the 1988 Federal Constitution to address violence against women, considering their implications for school education; and c) to investigate the meanings attributed to schools in official documents and academic literature on violence against women, particularly regarding the naturalization or problematization of such violence. This bibliographic and documentary study is grounded in Cultural-Historical Psychology and critical theories and covers the period from 1988 to 2025. Data were generated through the following stages: a) analysis of the literature on violence against women; b) analysis of legislation and public policies addressing violence against children, adolescents, and women; c) analysis of educational public policies concerning gender issues and violence against women; and d) analysis of educational programs focused on this issue, including the School that Protects Program (ProEP) and the Maria da Penha Goes to School Program (MPVE). This thesis argues that violence against women is historically produced and reproduced through social and educational relations and that schools play a contradictory role in this process: they may naturalize gender roles and unequal relations from childhood onward, while also contributing to their problematization and transformation. However, despite legal advances in addressing such violence, educational policies remain limited and fail to provide the conditions required for schools to implement continuous and systematic prevention and intervention initiatives. The results indicate that: a) the constitution of women and gender roles is a historical and social process mediated by educational relations; b) schools may either naturalize inequalities or problematize them by mediating the transition from spontaneous to scientific concepts; c) specific educational policies remain scarce, being limited to Law No. 14,164/2021, while the Brazilian National Common Core Curriculum (BNCC) (Brazil, 2017) does not explicitly address gender; and d) MPVE recognizes women as rights-bearing subjects and gender as a social power relation, but has limited territorial reach, whereas ProEP, despite its nationwide scope, subsumes gender-based violence under the broader notion of “violence in schools.” It is concluded that school education cannot overcome violence against women on its own, but it constitutes a strategic form of mediation for its problematization and prevention.