The Paths of Women's Professionalisation

This research aims to discuss the inclusion of women in higher education through the Pharmacy and Dentistry courses at the Pouso Alegre School of Pharmacy and Dentistry in the educational context of the first decades of the 20th century. This study also seeks to analyse and discuss the difficulties and limits faced by women in the struggle to enter higher education and the discourses surrounding female education, as well as the existence of a possible process of feminisation in the teaching career. As far as methodological aspects are concerned, this study seeks to dialogue with different types of historical sources, including reading and analysing the works of the main local memorialists, the press and a set of photographic images of students (graduation pictures). The research shows that in certain areas of knowledge, especially those dominated by men, such as engineering, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and law, women were already trying to enter, but faced economic and cultural limits.