Itamaraty and public administration restructuring during the Vargas era: the Osvaldo Aranha reform of 1938 and the obstruction of womens access to the diplomatic career

• Grant number: 18/05057-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: June 01, 2018
• End date: September 30, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - International Politics
• Agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal Investigator: Felipe Pereira Loureiro
• Grantee: Luah Batina Tomas
• Host Institution: Instituto de Relações Internacionais (IRI). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 19/11247-3 - Gender in Brazilian Diplomacy: rationalization of the Getúlio Vargas' public administration and the 1938 prohibition of women in Brazilian foreign service, BE.EP.MS

Abstract

This research will examine the motivating discourse around the rationalization process within the Brazilian public administration during the Getúlio Vargas government (1930-1945), analyzing the administrative changes in the Ministry of Foreign Relations that resulted in prohibiting the access of women to the Brazilian diplomatic career, institutionalized by the so-called Osvaldo Aranha reform of 1938. Using feminist theories of International Relations and public documents from government agencies and personal archives, we will analyze motivations and perceptions of key actors in this process, investigating how agents defended and justified Itamaraty's reform, in order to subjectively understand the social practices behind the content of such decisions. Taking the action to exclude women from the diplomatic body as the ending point of the analysis, this research will investigate the path in forming the idea of the need to modernize the state bureaucracy, making it supposedly more rational and efficient, and questioning how characteristics associated with femininity - and the presence of women, as the personification of these characteristics - could have been seen as counterproductive to the modernization of the bureaucracy and the instruments of Brazilian foreign policy. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

TOMAS, Luah Batina. Prejudice, marriage and motherhood: national and international perceptions on the 1938 prohibition of women in Brazilian foreign service. 2020. Master's Dissertation - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Relações Internacionais (IRI) São Paulo.