ABSTRACT
Objectives:
to learn and analyze the structure of nurses’ social representations about transvestite people.
Methods:
a qualitative research based on the Theory of Social Representations, with 110 nurses enrolled in Graduate Nursing courses, who answered the Free-Association Test, with the stimulus ‘transvestite’. Data were processed by the software Ensemble de Programmes Permettant I’ Analysedes Évocations.
Results:
in the central nucleus, the term “prejudice” was the most evoked, followed by “homosexual”, “identity” and “female-make-up”. Social representation is anchored in the social organization in which transvestite people are still seen and/or associated with homosexuals who make up and assume an identity, without being seen and/or understood as they really are.
Final Considerations:
although prejudice is noteworthy as a central element, terms present in the peripheral system reveal that the group recognizes transvestites as a person with rights, which can translate into health care practices.
Descriptors:
Transvestism; Nurses; Prejudice; Sexual and Gender Minorities; Free Association