Central and peripheral elements of the social representation of masculinity of students from the interior of Pernambuco

Abstract

Insofar as gender is a social, cultural and educational construction, social representations of gender are subject to change. In the case of masculinities, constructions associated with machismo and violence have been confronted. This paper aims to present the social representations of young high school students in the State of Pernambuco, Brazil, identified in research on masculinities. The methodology consisted of a free word association test and a centrality test, according to Abric (1994) and Moliner (2001), applied to 121 young people, 82 females and 39 males, between March and September 2021. The results indicate that the words man, machismo and strength make up their social representations central core.
KEYWORDS: Masculinity. Students. High school. Social Representations.