Dimensions of harassment at school: dialogs about gender with young high school students in São Paulo/Brazil

Abstract

In this article, we discuss uses of “harassment” as a category employed by young students from public high schools to make sense of violence and gender discrimination experiences that occur in and out of school. The analysis is based on fieldwork records produced within the scope of a multicenter, mixed-methods research carried out in nine schools located in São Paulo. Harassment appears as a polysemic category that, by naming violence, helps to face gender and generation hierarchies and inequalities. We infer that the young girls have questioned norms and attitudes that feed gender inequalities in schools; in addition, they have denounced the silence or inadequacy of the institution in facing the problem. This enables to identify convergences with a new sensibility regarding violence against women that globalized feminist discourses have brought to the surface.