Women and Punitive Practices: between Attempts at Historical Erasures and Modes of Resistance

Abstract:

This article discusses the emergence of women in the history of punitive practices in the country, proposing to unveil the invisibility of control and violence directed at poor girls in the urban space, abandoned and delinquent, in the years 1930-1960, revealing the centrality of these practices for the maintenance and reproduction of the system of inequalities and violence based on gender, race and class markers. Through the institutional records of the Social Service for Minors of São Paulo, forms of criminalization and punishment were identified, as well as the control devices over the body, sexuality and self-determination that, despite reinforcing inequities, did not prevent strategies from being engendered by the subjects to resist the onslaught of power, through daily insurgency acts reactive to repeated attempts at subjection.

Keywords:
Women; Childhood; Punishment; Resistance; Illegalisms