A Brief Historical Overview of Gender Studies in Our Region: The Cases of Argentina and Brazil

In recent years, the term "gender" has gained visibility in social discourse. That is why expressions such as "gender violence", "gender identity", "gender equality" (among others) appear everyday in mass media. Such discursive proliferation can not be properly understood without taking into account the discussions held within feminism as a social movement and an academic stream.

The area of knowledge we now call "gender studies" was first consolidated at the universities of the central regions (United States and Western European countries). Our Latin American region has not been left out of this epistemological, theoretical and methodological renewal. Therefore, in this paper I am looking forward to: 1) exploring the origins of the category "gender" as a tool for analysis in contemporary social sciences and humanities and 2) focusing on the historical configuration of this interdisciplinary field in two national cases, Argentina and Brazil (and also highlighting some similarities and differences between them).